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blw2
02-19-2019, 22:56
I thought this stuff looked interesting.... He gets into an altruistic philosophical thing about foreign aid and such... but no matter which side of that you might fall, I thought this powder looked very interesting. Drinking seriously muddy water.
https://youtu.be/6qZWMNW7GmE

Hikes in Rain
02-19-2019, 23:48
Alum will do that. It's been used literally for millennia. I was a little taken aback when the fella appeared to drink the bridge bilge without further treatment, though! A coagulant will remove total suspended solids (TSS), but the resulting water is still not fit to drink, especially from the sources shown. It's only a primary treatment. The rapid sedimentation is pretty cool, though, isn't it?

Time Zone
02-20-2019, 01:44
The video explains that the powder has 3 parts: coagulant, flocculant, and chlorine - so it's not just a (preliminary) treatment.

moldy
02-20-2019, 08:31
This system minus the sand filter is the system that most water treatment plants in the US are using. It takes several chemicals to provide this trick. The question I have is, after ingesting the contents of that packet are you better off than a person who just uses a filter? Most of this magic trick was the clearness of the water after alum was added. Yet the clearness is not the issue. Clear or not, the thing that it made it drinkable was the killing of the microbes. So after using the usual hiker treatments out on the trail you will end up with the same drinkable water that is cloudy. Do you really want to swallow a teaspoon of alum so that your water appears clear?

Five Tango
02-20-2019, 10:00
Back in my youth I had a Class III water plant operator's license.I do like the idea of these small packages of treatment to remove the solids to prolong the useful life of your water filter.There's no way I would have drunk that particular sample without further filtering and sterilization though.