has anyone seen Purinize water treatment

suppose to get rid of viruses, bacteria and chemicals from water. those who use it I am interested in what you think. Suppose to make anything but water clump together and then fall to the bottom. Then you can just filer it with a coffee filter https://www.purinize.com/

Before I entrust my health to a "proprietary combination of complex [unidentified] mineral salts" (or anything else), I'd like to see independent laboratory verification from other than the manufacturer's website! I didn't see anything on the manufacturer's website about EPA approval, either, meaning, of course, that the product hasn't been approved.

Looks like it might be good for remove heavier debris. I am doing a 3 day trip new years. The only source of water is mucky pond water. Im going to try it with that and then filter it

The most common inorganic coagulant is Alum. It has been used to clarify turbid water prior to treatment. If you add a bit of Alum to a bucket of turbid water, mix it and then let it stand for a while, the solids will settle out and the clarified water can be decanted. Most water treatment plants use a coagulation/flocculation process prior to filtration and disinfection. For back country water, it's easier to use an Alum Solution in a dropper bottle than to try to use crystals. I suppose that Alum is more commonly used while canoeing where there is ample water, but the water is turbid. The water will still have to be disinfected before it is safe to drink.

Yes, alum is often recommended for removing glacial silt (which can wreak horrors on filters) before filtering. You can achieve the same results by letting the water sit for a few hours so the silt settles to the bottom of your container. In this case, using chlorine dioxide tablets (which also take a few hours), rather than filtering, is feasible.

Make sense. while backpacking in banff my filter clogged fast because of so much rock flour in the water

I'm indebted to our long-time member phat, whose home territory is the Canadian Rockies, for the above!

I am going to have to disagree on settling out glacial silt. Much of the glacial "silt" is not really silt, but finer particles in suspension and cannot be settled out. Settling the water will be helpful for your filter, but it will still get clogged with suspended solids. Same goes for organics that are in suspension. Coagulants make those non-settling particles glom together and become big enough to settle out or to attach to the coagulant chemically. That is why coagulation works.

so that purinizer would work?

Just pick up some alum; it's cheaper!

From what I see on the Purinize site, I wouldn't touch the stuff. I think that it is probably Alum in water solution. A lot of claims, no proof. If it is Non-Toxic, it won't kill pathogenic bacteria or protozoans. Flocculants are not disinfectants. Alum is cheap and readily available, although you might have to go to a farm store to find it. Settling and decanting can reduce the disinfectant demand or help prevent filter clogging. It will require carrying more stuff, which may be worthwhile if turbidity is a real problem.

http://www.iwapublishing.com/news/simple-options-remove-turbidity

A Youtube video on Alum flocculation on the Green River:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9BY69KnzoU

It makes sense for canoeing, but carrying a five gallon pail on a backpacking trip might not be fun. If I were to try to do this, I would use a collapsing bucket like the Sea to Summit folding bucket and a few feet of plastic tubing to make a siphon to decant the clarified water.

The other use for flocculation when backpacking is if you're where all the streams come from glacial sources and are therefore silty. If you're where there are plenty of both glacial and non-glacial streams, you just need to pick the clear streams for filtering.

If I were where glacial streams were the only choice, I'd do the settling bit and use chlorine dioxide treatment, since both require several hours and can be done simultaneously. This of course requires planning ahead on water, and probably carrying more at a time. Forget the filter in that case--as W_D says, even after settling, there will still be enough glacial silt left in the water to clog a filter.

Floccculation does not remove any nasty organisms or chemical impurities, which is why I wouldn't bother with this "purinize" stuff.

I ran across a paper that talks about using natural polymers to replace alum as a flocculant. One of the natural flocculants that they mentioned was Tapioca Starch. The idea of using Tapioca Starch as a flocculant is intriguing, but I don't know that I want to spend the time to test it.

That's similar to reactions to Spam (mine) and fruitcake (several others) on another current thread here! Yech!

Wouldn't you have to cook the mixture?

There appears to be quite a bit of literature relating to the use of starch based polymers in water treatment, but most of this literature refers to acid or alkaline processed starches and it is not at all clear how they are making them. I think that I will stick with alum.

I suspect this stuff is Alum with ClO2 or other similar purifier. I don't know enough chemistry to determine if the two would counteract each other. It's possible they have done the research and found an optimized combination. Without independent confirmation that the stuff is effective I wouldn't trust that that is the case.

Mixing a flocculant with a Chlorine disinfectant is generally not a good idea. It's best to clarify the water before adding the Chlorine. Clarified water reduces the Chlorine demand, but also reduces the production of Trichloromethane (Chloroform). Trihalomethanes are formed when algae is present when Chlorine disinfectants are used. The EPA frowns on the use of Chlorine disinfectants prior to flocculation and decantation.

Im not sure if I would trust it to drink without filtering. In Texas most of the streams are murky/ I will use it do get rid of all the particals in the water before I filer. The bottle I bought only is 2oz. I am doing a 3 day trip in a few week. Its just a 4 mile hike in and base camp near a pound. I will use it for the pound water