Home water filtration is becoming more and more common and affordable, allowing regular families to utilize high-efficiency filtration systems for all their drinking water needs. One of the most efficient household water filtration methods is ultrafiltration. Ultrafiltration prevents suspended particles and materials of high molecular weight to pass through, giving you some of the cleanest drinking water possible!

Our UF Filtration Systems

Water ultrafiltration (UF) is a low pressure membrane process that typically uses a hollow fiber membrane filter made from polyethersulfone. Hollow fiber membranes can be visualized as a group of extremely small tubes that only allow liquid and dissolved particles, such as salt, to pass through. This allows the filter to effectively remove bacteria, viruses, and other harmful particles from drinking water.

In use, an ultrafiltration drinking water system can effectively remove chlorine taste & odor, cysts, VOCs, and MTE by using a prefilter and hollow fiber membrane. An ultrafiltration membrane with a 0.02 micron rating can consistently remove particles that are about 5,000 times smaller than a human hair. Now that is some serious performance!

How Effective is Ultrafiltration?

We can continue to say how powerful drinking water ultrafiltration is, but none of that matters if you do not know which contaminants it removes from your water. UF systems offer complete or significant reduction of bacteria, benzene, chlorine, crypto, pesticides, rust, taste/odor, and viruses. This means that UF filters entirely remove a wide range of the most harmful contaminants that can be present in drinking water.

UF systems also offer partial reduction in algae, chloride, and copper. These substances are very rarely found in drinking water, but they are harmful when present in significant quantities. Specialty ultrafiltration systems that more fully reduce harmful metal content are also available.

It is important to note that UF only offers minimal reduction of arsenic, fluoride, nitrates, salt, and sulfate. Make sure you know what contaminants you want to remove from your water before purchasing an entire filtration system! UF systems remove a vast majority of contaminants from drinking water, but not 100% of them.

Ultrafiltration Costs

Some people may hesitate to install a water filtration system in their home, but it can actually save money in the first year, especially if a household has previously relied on bottled water. A reliable UF system can be found for $150, but prices range widely. With annual filter costs at around $140 for that type of system, the first year of ultrafiltration ends up costing around $300. The water that passes through the filter only costs about $0.14 per gallon.

Bottled water costs about $1 per gallon, and the average household drinks about 10 gallons of water each week. This adds up to as much as $520 per year. This is significantly greater than the UF costs, especially when you consider the quality of filtration. The contaminants in bottled water vary by brand, with very few guarantees on water purity. With home filtration, you know exactly what contaminants have been removed. If you want peace of mind and affordability, ultrafiltration is the obvious choice.