Development of a Low Energy Consuming and Environmental Friendly Filter for Water Purification

The recent inflow of foot-and-mouth disease leachate has made people recognize safety of drinking water, once again. According to the U.N., Korea is one of countries with water shortages, and thus must secure high-quality water resources and strictly maintain them. However, water is polluted frequently and there is still a lack of water treatment technologies and facilities to provide safe water. We focus on home purifier filter which is closely associated with our life.Home water purifier filtering system consists of four and five stages on the market. Four stages are composed of a sediment filter, a pre-carbon filter, an UF/RO membrane filter and a post-carbon filter. A ceramic filter is added to five stages for improving the taste of water and furthermore, to prevent the growth of bacteria in the water tank. In order to analyze the operating condition of home water purifier’s filter, products from six companies on sale in the market were selected as specimens. For a sediment filters, a range of operating condition at highest pressure was 0.392 ~ 0.862 MPa. In case of UF/RO membrane filters, filters were able to operate a range of 0.392 ~ 0.823 MPa at highest pressure. The operating condition of pre and post carbon filters was found to have same range with operating condition of sediment filter. To minimize the pressure loss and the energy loss in filtration, we are trying to solve by developing electrospun nanofiler. They have dozens or even hundreds nanometer in diameter, also a positive electric charge by electrospinning. Two factors can make easy to capture particles and even virus in the water. Especially, particulate matter has a negative charge in the water can be captured by attraction between nanofilter and particulate matter. This study focuses on having low pressure drop and high energy efficiency in filtration using the eletrospun nanofilter. The result for this experiment shows possibility to replace old one.