drip filter

-
I convinced myself that purifying water at home is much cheaper than buying at the sari-sari store (that's the village version of the convenience store)... more convenient too, since I don't have to lug around a jug of water every few days. And so I ended up buying a drip filtration set (multi-stage filter) at the nearby mall.

It has a ceramic filter, which should remove the particulates from the tap water. Apparently, the pores in this filter are so small that even normal-sized bacteria couldn't get through! Then there's this cartridge with several layers: activated carbon, silica, and zeolite. Granular activated carbon and silica are said to trap the off-flavours and off-odours plus some more bacteria that are small enough to pass through the ceramic filter. Zeolite, on the other hand, acts like an ion-exchanger. Because of this behaviour, zeolite is used to attract heavy metals that are harmful to the body. Just before water gets ready to drink, it passes through a final stage where mineral stones are found. These stones are the nutrient-booster of the group since they "fortify" the water with important elements such as potassium and sodium. 

As I wait (impatiently) for the water to go into the lower tank, I remember my stay in Sydney Uni where I had to filter water as well... 

2006. My experiment was about measuring the particle size of starch polymers suspended in water. The machine I was using to take measurements was so sensitive that it could mistake dust (which tend to collect in water) as the target material. That was why I had to make sure that not even viruses could contaminate the distilled and purified water I was to use in my experiment. My water reservoir (distilled water) was way up above the bench; a long Tygon tube snaked its way from the reservoir to a collection bottle found on the floor. Atop this bottle was a filter that had pores smaller than the smallest viruses. Since the pores were really small, the filtration process was tediously slow: it took all day just to get enough dust-free water for sample preparation... I used so many filters because they kept getting clogged up by whatever was suspended in the water during filtration.

Back to 2011. Water flow is indeed faster in my home set up than in what I was using in school. However, it wasn't fast enough for me to stay up. I'm going to bed. Tomorrow, there should be enough water for taste-testing. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more