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Bleach for Water Purification


cmkb3

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Per:

   https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/emergency-disinfection-drinking-water

   https://www.clorox.com/how-to/disinfecting-sanitizing/disaster-preparation-and-cleanup/disaster-preparedness-purifying-water/

 

Bleach can be used as an emergency water purifier at a ratio of 1 tsp (~5mL) to 5 gallons (for particularly nasty/cloudy/cold water. Regular water purification requires half of this amount). This could provide a quicker (non-renewable) way to purify quantities of water.

 

One thing to note is that bleach is not as effective as boiling in killing parasites -- this would be most notable is trying to purify lake or river water. This should most likely not be a consideration for rain water.

 

 

Edited by cmkb3
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I'm sure, that drinking rain water in real should not be a problem, if the collecting vessel is clean. This should be implemented. 

For the river water: I would heat the water up - this should make it drinkable. 

I'm not quite sure for what kind of water bleach could be used - water from mud puddles? :)

 

Edit: It should also be possible to clean water by adding a little amount of high percentage alcohol. 

Edited by Thuztor
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13 hours ago, Thuztor said:

I'm sure, that drinking rain water in real should not be a problem, if the collecting vessel is clean. This should be implemented. 

For the river water: I would heat the water up - this should make it drinkable. 

I'm not quite sure for what kind of water bleach could be used - water from mud puddles? :)

 

Edit: It should also be possible to clean water by adding a little amount of high percentage alcohol. 

 

In previous discussions about tainted water, devs/support team have stated that they are following CDC guidelines for potable water -- the CDC does not consider rain water to be potable, see: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/rainwater-collection.html

 

As far as adding alcohol water to 'clean' it -- unfortunately, I am unable to find any information that adding alcohol to water has any sterilizing or purifying properties. While low levels of alcohol % can help extend the amount of time that already purified water remains potable, it is not a reliable way to clean water.

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On 1/12/2020 at 3:49 AM, Thuztor said:

 

Edit: It should also be possible to clean water by adding a little amount of high percentage alcohol. 

 

That wouldn't clean the water, that just dilutes your alcohol. Alcohol needs to be at least 50% to be effective at sterilizing anything.

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You're right, it won't clean the water, it would disinfect the water and kills viruses, bacteria and fungi. 

And in my language is high percentage alcohol above 50%, so I'm not sure what the difference between "at least 50%" and "high percentage" is for you. 

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