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ENVIRONMENTAL TEHNOLOGY VERIFICATION REPORT - PHYSICAL REMOVAL OF MICROBIAL CONTAMINATION AGENTS IN DRINKING WATER, KINETICO INCORPORATED PALL/KINETICO PUREFECTA DRINKING WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM (POU)
Citation:
NSF International. ENVIRONMENTAL TEHNOLOGY VERIFICATION REPORT - PHYSICAL REMOVAL OF MICROBIAL CONTAMINATION AGENTS IN DRINKING WATER, KINETICO INCORPORATED PALL/KINETICO PUREFECTA DRINKING WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM (POU). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2004.
Description:
The Purefecta™ was tested for removal of bacteria and viruses at NSF International's Drinking Water Treatment Systems Laboratory. Kinetico submitted 10 units for testing, which were split into two groups of five. One group received 25 days of conditioning prior to challenge testing, while the second group was tested immediately. Both groups were identically challenged. The challenge organisms were the viruses fr, MS2, and Phi X 174, and the bacteria Brevundimonas diminuta and Hydrogenophaga pseudoflava. The test units were challenged at two different inlet pressures - 40 and 80 pounds per square inch, gauge (psig). The virus challenges were conducted at three different pH settings, 6, 7.5, and 9, to assess whether pH affects the performance of the reverse osmosis membrane. The bacteria challenges were only conducted at pH 7.5. The unconditioned units reduced all three viruses to less than detectible levels in every challenge, while the conditioned units reduced all three viruses to less than detectible levels in every challenge except one. The bacteria counts for the unconditioned units were all less than 10 colony forming units (CFU)/100mL, but there were two instances in which the bacteria counts for the conditioned units were higher. Since bacteria are larger than viruses, it was expected that all of the bacteria effluent counts would be lower than the virus counts, but this was not the case. The reason(s) for observing higher numbers of bacteria in the treated water cannot be verified.