What is pool filtration?

Pool filtration removes organic and inorganic materials from pool water, leading to water purification. Simply explained, the pool water is passed through a porous material to separate, permeate and concentrate. Click here to learn more about how pool filtration works. Regardless of how large the pool is, pool filtration is essential to obtain a clean and healthy pool and spa area, which is also guided by international safety guidelines published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and information on swimming pool hygiene published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Various technologies can perform swimming pool filtration. Yet, some of the most popular commercial pool filters are sand filters, ceramic filters, cartridge filters, and regenerative filters. Common to all technologies, they run in a closed-loop. Dirty water is taken from the swimming pool to be treated and pumped into the water treatment facility. How the technologies treat the water, how fine they treat it, and which chemical treatment and chemical concentration they use heavily vary. Commercial pool filters use the expression microns to define the size of contaminants they remove. Microns are short for micrometer, equivalent to one-millionth of a meter. Typically, swimming pool filtration solutions can filter down to 3-50 microns. Although this sounds extremely small, there is a big difference between whether a solution can filter down to 3 microns or 50 microns. A human hair is typically approximately 50 microns, while bacteria measure around 2-3 microns. Thus, a swimming pool filtration system that only filters down to 50 microns may not be capable of removing all bacteria and pathogenic organisms. Once treated, clean water is pumped back into the swimming pool. Click here to learn more about some of the technologies and how they differ.

If not cleaned, swimming pools are heavily filled with contaminants and particles. These both stem from environmental sources as well as from swimmers.

Outdoor pools are especially affected by environmental contaminants, such as debris and dirt, bird droppings potentially containing harmful pathogens, rain with microscopic algae spores, as well as various waters stemming from unhygienic sources.

Although indoor pools are not as exposed to environmental contaminants as outdoor pools, many contaminants are induced by swimmers. And although swimmers may maintain high sanitation standards, it is impossible to prevent the introduction of pool contaminants. These contaminants comprise micro-organisms stemming from infected swimmers, body fluids such as sweat, saliva, mucus, urine, feces, and a diverse range of personal care products such as body lotion, sunscreen, perfume, and cosmetics. As an example, researchers have established that each person using a swimming pool introduces 30 to 80 ml of urine on average. Thus, a commercial pool used by many people may easily contain several liters of urine.

To add to the criticality of swimming pool pollution, once pure chlorine is introduced to contaminants, it can cause unwanted reactions. Their interactions can, among others, produce chloramines, which can cause health concerns.

Commercial pool filtration can remove suspended particles, microorganisms, and Cryptosporidium alveolates, abbreviated crypto, a parasitic alveolate stemming from human feces. The best commercial pool filters can remove more than 99 % of unwanted particles, improving water quality. Learn more about why pool filtration is so important for human health.

Multiple technologies can be used to filter pool water. Yet, based on more than 20 years of experience, we have developed a unique and patented industrial pool filter, which delivers significantly improved pool water quality for human health and a more sustainable world. Likewise, it uses a reduced amount of chemicals. Click here to learn more about sustainable pool filtration with reduced chemical consumption.