Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter
100 points - last Tuesday at 3:36 PM
Sourcecassianoleal
yesterday at 8:14 PM
Ceramic filters are very common in Brazil, used in clay recipients which also keep the water cool even in summer without spending energy.
https://g1.globo.com/saude/noticia/2026/03/14/filtro-de-barr...
hei-lima
today at 12:44 AM
Mostly in rural regions, but the 'filtro de barro' water from your grandma's house beats ANY expensive filter you can get, haha!
weinzierl
yesterday at 10:47 PM
This and the low-tech electrical shower-head are the two everyday Brazilian things that never cease to amaze me.
mlinhares
yesterday at 11:12 PM
Being poor sucks but at the same time being poor also makes you find alternative solutions to the incredibly expensive solutions first world countries use today. I really wish Brazil can invest heavily into renewables and free itself from oil and electrify even more of everything we do.
> electrical shower-head
Is that for electrically heated water?
I know that in the US on-demand electric water heater uses an enormous amount of electricity, like 100 amps.
Brazilian electrical shower-heads use 20 to 30 amps max.
idiotsecant
today at 2:32 AM
Then they don't heat same volume to same temp, it's thermodynamics
fastball
yesterday at 8:00 PM
There is a company[1] in Indonesia that actually makes very nice versions of this tech.
[1] https://www.terrawaterindonesia.com/
3eb7988a1663
yesterday at 9:31 PM
That ad claims it removes microplastics. I was led to believe there are few easy ways to accomplish such a thing. Is this a, "Well technically, we started at 100ug/mL and ended at 99.8ug/mL => reduction!" or is this a meaningful improvement in water quality? The pot looks to just be clay + charcoal + silver - which is not significantly different from other home water filtration systems.
gizmo686
yesterday at 10:27 PM
Filtering out microplastics is not particularly difficult. I just checked the first water filter brand that came to mind, and their independent test results [0] reported no detectable microplastics after filtration [1].
Having said that, the linked website above does not inspire much confidence. They have independent lab testing, which is good. However, that testing appears to only cover bacteria; and even their, only two types. Their lab testing also does not indicate any sort of methodology, and it is not clear if the lab was even attempting to test the filter, or if they were just testing the filtered water.
[0] Funded by them, and reported on their website
[1] Their sample had a known quantity of microplastics, of which they had a 75% detection rate for their control sample.
Well the difference is that most home water filtration systems (e.g. Brita et al) are made out of plastic, so even if their filters do reduce microplastic levels, making that claim to consumers ("our plastic filters help reduce plastic in your water") might be a hard sell.
Aboutplants
yesterday at 11:15 PM
“The pot looks to just be clay + charcoal + silver - which is not significantly different from other home water filtration systems.”
Ah, the at home water filtration systems that encapsulated in plastics! Though the benefit of clean water likely makes any potential plastic contamination from the filters moot
treetalker
yesterday at 9:02 PM
From https://www.terrawaterindonesia.com/the-filter:
> A single Terra filter purifies up to 42 liters of safe, pure drinking water a day, equivalent of 2 and a half plastic gallons.
Someone should tell them to check their math.
ssl-3
yesterday at 9:42 PM
Those are plastic gallons. Plastic gallons are similar to treetalker gallons and ssl-3 gallons, in that all of these units share the property of being different compared to US gallons.
(The ssl-3 gallon is particularly strange: It isn't even a measure of volume at all.)
SoftTalker
yesterday at 11:10 PM
Heh never heard of a plastic gallon. I was imagining a plastic gallon jug such as a milk jug.
fastball
yesterday at 11:15 PM
Yeah, in Indonesia (and other parts of the world), the 5-gallon jug you would stick in e.g. a water cooler is called a "water gallon".
treetalker
yesterday at 11:26 PM
TIL! Not the first time I've made a mistake on account of failing to detect that a different English was being used.
SoftTalker
yesterday at 11:23 PM
I assume it's a local/informal unit of measure? DDG doesn't know what a "plastic gallon" unit is.
fastball
yesterday at 11:51 PM
It's not really a unit of measurement but rather just what you'd call the container[1], which in turn is 5 gallon / 19L. But nobody says "My 19L water jug", they they just say "My water gallon".
Since most people in Indonesia get their drinking water from these jugs, stating this filter's output in "gallon" terms is just the easiest way to communicate potential savings etc (since people pay per jug, so they think in jug terms, not in any other unit of measure).
[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61fpdmJYUuL.jpg
I may have had an early version of this at home in Indonesia as a kid. Given how close we were to both sea level and the equator, the fact that the water was cool, even when site power failed for days, was bliss!
I wonder if you could achieve the same effect more easily/consistently using cement. It's basically how aquifers "filter" water. Limestone is naturally permeable unlike fired clay.. were you need to control the porosity. I'd imagine cement mixtures are much easier to handle and you can make arbitrary shapes (higher surface area and higher hydraulic pressure to increase the flow rate)
ChrisMarshallNY
yesterday at 9:11 PM
When I was a kid, we'd go camping, and we had these water filters that you would pump water through, and they would filter it.
It was ceramic, and I think it was the same idea, but we used a pump to force the water through (like a bicycle pump).
notjes
yesterday at 7:52 PM
Got hackernewsd
metalman
yesterday at 9:45 PM
they are not kidding about the "lowtech" or at least slowtech part, hey it loaded! no wonder it was slow, it's reporting about 1990 from 2020