How do we purify water? – Catalysis Zone

Question: How do we purify water?
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Asked by ALOrona to John, Laura, Luke, Rob, Ruth on 10 Jun 2016.
- Robert Williams answered on 10 Jun 2016:
  
  There are a number of basic methods:
  a) Filtration to remove suspended materials including bacteria
  b) Chemical treatment to remove dissolved organic and inorganic materials
  c) Treatment with high powered UV light to sterilise the water by producing ozone in situ
  d) A combination of all three
  You can also use distillation with any or all of the above to produce super pure water for making medicines for injecting. See this link for more details…
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/triple_aqa/water/purifying_water/revision/1/
- Laura Finney answered on 10 Jun 2016:
  
  Robert has got it!
- Ruth Patchett answered on 11 Jun 2016:
  
  I don’t think I can beat Roberts answer here. Largely it is filtered in lots of different ways to get “bits” out of it from large things like sticks to small things like sand. Chemicas can be used to help there stick together and to kill bacteria in the water. For the lab when we need extra clean water without salts in that we can safely drink we can distil water which involves boiling the water and then cooling the water vapour on a cold surface so it condenses (like it does on a window) and catching all the droplets. This is useful for stopping us from getting any salts in our reactions that we don’t want but is too much work for drinking water.
- John Fossey answered on 13 Jun 2016:
  
  Do you mean for domestic supply – or if we were in need of clean water.
  
  Distilled water is pretty pure.
  
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Question: How do we purify water?

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