For most everyone around the world, turning on your tap and getting fresh clean water is just a way of life. While this might seem to be a simple fact of modern civilization, it's a relatively new innovation in the timeline of human development. Access to fresh water is one of the largest drivers of
For most everyone around the world, turning on your tap and getting fresh clean water is just a way of life. While this might seem to be a simple fact of modern civilization, it's a relatively new innovation in the timeline of human development.
Access to fresh water is one of the largest drivers of creating a modern society, but what allows everyone access to seemingly endless supplies of potable water? It depends on where you live, but chances are behind your tap there's a municipal water treatment plant.
There are two main types of water treatment plants: drinking water and wastewater plants. We'll be focusing in on drinking water plants here, but if you'd like to learn about how wastewater is treated, you can watch a video on the topic here.
Both types of treatment plants serve the purpose of cleaning water, but in general, wastewater treatment plants will output water, or effluent, into streams or rivers and drinking water plants, or potable water treatment plants, will output their treated water into a city's pipe distribution network.
The question still remains, how exactly does one treatment plant take dirty river or well water and turn it into water that is safe to drink? It involves a lot of processing using chemicals, filters, and removing all of the toxins and hazards from a given water source.
