More than half of all new homes in the U.S. and Canada are being built in areas without municipal water and sewage infrastructure, leaving them especially vulnerable to biological contamination from source groundwater and surface water used for drinking. Increasingly common breaks in municipal water delivery lines raise the possibility of contamination of centrally treated water as it travels to homes. Water safety concerns include threats of biological terrorism and recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
Other water worries spring from deaths and illnesses caused by E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Legionella and other waterborne pathogens. Additionally, environmental groups, public safety organizations and regulatory agencies have become concerned with the hazards posed by disinfection byproducts and other unwanted chemicals in the water supply.
“Aquacore protects the whole home’s water environment from biological contaminants,” said Neil Oliver, president of Aquacore, marketers of the residential ultrafiltration system that brings an uninterrupted stream of bottled water quality drinking water to every tap in the house. “It’s like having a bottled water plant in your house that doesn’t waste water, compared with less-efficient reverse osmosis units. Aquacore removes health threats from pathogens including bacteria, viruses and cysts, without removing the minerals you want in the water. We feel it’s an essential environmental protection system for today’s healthy home.”
Aquacore hollow-fiber ultrafiltration (HF) systems operate on available water pressure and require no chemicals to deliver high quality drinking water. UF membrane technology has been proven in water treatment plants worldwide. Unlike RO, Aquacore leaves dissolved minerals intact, and no holding tank is required as water is processed at a rate of 10 gpm. While typical RO systems lose 50% or more in incoming water, 98%-efficient Aquacore uses a patented multi-bore hollow fiber membrane design with seven capillaries in every fiber. Thousands of membrane strands have billions of pores that act as a strainer to filter out particles, turbidity and pathogens, while allowing water to flow through with virtually no pressure drop.
Aquacore membranes filter down to approximately .02 microns nominal. The inside-out filtration process channels water inside the capillaries, trapping impurities on the inside walls and removing them with a high-velocity flushing action. “We believe that our inside-out process assures regular, effective cleansing and assures longer membrane life,” Oliver said. A typical installation includes a sediment prefilter and optional GAC post filter.
Visit Booth 507 at the Green Building Conference March 11, 2006, in Albuquerque, N.M., for more information.
Source: Aquacore
