Answers
And what purpose do they serve?
It is called activated charcoal. It has been processed to be very porous so that all the impurities in the water you are filtering basically stick to it, and it lets the pure water flow through.
Brita Water Filter www.brita.ca BRITA products have no effect on the fluoride content of water. www.brita.net Brita says their water filters don ...
There are little black specs in the top of my water filter where you pour the water into. What are they?
It is some of the carbon granules that have floated out of the top of the filter from when you filled it with water.
No biggy - it is normal and harmless.
And since your answering that, how do those filters work?
Activated charcoal.
Works as follows:
Charcoal is carbon. Activated charcoal is charcoal that has been treated with oxygen to open up millions of tiny pores between the carbon atoms. According to Encyclopedia Britannica:
The use of special manufacturing techniques results in highly porous charcoals that have surface areas of 300-2,000 square metres per gram. These so-called active, or activated, charcoals are widely used to adsorb odorous or coloured substances from gases or liquids.
The word adsorb is important here. When a material adsorbs something, it attaches to it by chemical attraction. The huge surface area of activated charcoal gives it countless bonding sites. When certain chemicals pass next to the carbon surface, they attach to the surface and are trapped.
Activated charcoal is good at trapping other carbon-based impurities ("organic" chemicals), as well as things like chlorine. Many other chemicals are not attracted to carbon at all -- sodium, nitrates, etc. -- so they pass right through. This means that an activated charcoal filter will remove certain impurities while ignoring others. It also means that, once all of the bonding sites are filled, an activated charcoal filter stops working. At that point you must replace the filter.
Cheers
every time i pour it out and pour tap water through the filter i always find little specks of black things. is it safe to drink or should i return it?
it's perfectly safe. Sometimes they give the same activated charcoal to patients in hospitals to help with some ailments. Not to worry. Little tiny specs of it won't make a difference.
http://www.wapc.org/firstaid/activated_c harcoal.htm#whenchar
why are there black dots on the bottom of it?
im guessing its not a good thing but what am i suppose to do to get rid of them?
thanks:)
It's probably charcoal, that's what it uses to filter the water.
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