10-06-2006, 12:54 PM
Racer X, have you used the sawyer bottle? I will be surprised if it actually works, or works well enough to use while biking. It probably will produce some water slowly when you squeeze it. But there is no indication that it contains a carbon filter, so no indication that it will affect taste. It doesn't list the micron size for the filter, but it does not filter viruses, so probably a medium to small filter. Filtering water at that micron level is not easy or free; it takes energy or pressure, presumably produced by you sucking or squeezing for every drop.
Mattkine wants to filter at the molecular leval, which is orders of magnitude smaller than that. The chlorine will just flow through a filter like that just like it is not there. The only way I know to filter out chlorine molecules is with carbon activated matrix or through reverse osmosis. Basically the carbon atoms trap nonH20 molecules as the water passes. This requires billions of tiny pores, and enough space and enough time to get them all, so the matrix has to be thick enough to be effective. Each carbon atom only traps one molecule, so the matrix gets used up. Lots of filters are carbon or charcoal activated, so you need to find one with that to really affect taste (as far as I know, in about 20 years of backpacking experience with a filter, and the owner of a under the sink filter and a whole house filter).
Mattkine wants to filter at the molecular leval, which is orders of magnitude smaller than that. The chlorine will just flow through a filter like that just like it is not there. The only way I know to filter out chlorine molecules is with carbon activated matrix or through reverse osmosis. Basically the carbon atoms trap nonH20 molecules as the water passes. This requires billions of tiny pores, and enough space and enough time to get them all, so the matrix has to be thick enough to be effective. Each carbon atom only traps one molecule, so the matrix gets used up. Lots of filters are carbon or charcoal activated, so you need to find one with that to really affect taste (as far as I know, in about 20 years of backpacking experience with a filter, and the owner of a under the sink filter and a whole house filter).