Steripen water purifiers
 

I've been traveling in Mexico for the past month and I just wanted to give a quick review of a water purifier called Steripen.

SteriPEN Freedom portable UV water purifer

This device is only a purifier it will not filter and it will not change the flavor of the water. It uses a UV light to kill bacteria. It is charged via USB and does come with the charger. I have purified dozens of liters of water without the need to recharge the unit.

My primary reason for choosing this device was so that I would not need to leave a trail of hundreds of water bottles during my trip. I have been drinking 3-5 Liters per day. I have tried in the past to get used to local water supplies when it had questionable potability. I have paid dearly for this and I never want to go through being sick from waterborne bugs.

I have always been able to find water from a tap. I use a 1/2 liter bottle as my purifying bottle and then pour it into other containers and a camelback water pack. The device will purify 1/2 liter in less than a minute.

So far the device has worked well and I have yet to purchase bottled water.

Does the 'Steripen' take care of chemicals like the 'Puralytics'?

No. With a steripen you are killing giardia, bacteria and viruses but you have to start out with uncloudy unsmelly drinkable looking water as opposed to say a ceramic pump filter that can filter some pretty god awful looking drack if you don't mind cleaning the filter often. The advantage of the steripen is that it is compact and can purify a liter of water in 90 seconds as opposed to 4-6 hours for a Puralytics solarbag on a cloudy day. Another advantage is that it can use rechargeable AA batteries the same as my digicam and older GPS and purifies a lot of useable water per charge. Puralytics is great technology but when you're on the road it is bulky, easily punctured and more time consuming to use. If you're out of water and reach a mountain stream dying of thirst 90 seconds wins.

In my experience difficult to use technology or hard to find pump seals fall by the wayside eventually. Which is why pumping five or more liters of water a day with filters like Katadyne or waiting for passive systems like Puralytics which takes even longer often fall into disuse in favor of the convenience of bottled water. Which is why I will travel with the steripen. Not the best but good enough for my purposes, not too annoying and something I will actually use

At least that's been my experience.

Cheers,
John Downs

"This process actually destroys contaminants, rather than capturing them and creating a hazardous waste disposal problem.

So Pyralitics destroys heavy metals etc. ? I don't think so.

From the Puralitics website:

The Puralytics Process effectively removes the broadest range of contaminants. These include:
Chemical Contaminants - pharmaceuticals, pesticides, herbicides, petrochemicals, personal care products
Heavy metals - lead, mercury, arsenic, and selenium
Micro-organisms - viruses, bacteria, protozoa, cysts
The process is environmentally and cost effective:
No chemicals or additives
No waste water
No pressure loss

I am not an employee of Puralytics

It seams like the metals etc. are adsorped by a special grid placed in the bag. The conversion is only done to facilitate the adsorption.

The only potential problem would be if the nanomaterial used, later shows to have sideeffects not known today.

I owe you an apology for being so negative and thank you for the info. I will try it, if its available and not too expensive.

Great... if full of faith!
 

If I recall, Steripen's UV light sort of "castrates" the bacteriae (I cannot get the proper word, sorry), so that you drink the giardia, but it won't reproduce inside you. If you plan to use it, it's best to have their 1 liter transparent bottle to adapt a filtered cap (for dirtier water), where the rubber right over the bulb fits, so it is easier to make the water turn around. Transparent is good to see that the light is actually working.

The device may be great... but I still kind of distrust it, just something in the back of my mind that I never felt with pills or ceramic katadyn (which is great, but so slow with small ones like mine!). It's related to a time when tap water tasted like taken directly from the toilet and I got "turista", maybe the bunch just did not have need to reproduce to make the effect! 90 seconds is unbeatable compared to a 1h pill or a 100 boring pumps, but I always wonder, is this light really killing or just lighting?

Esteban

good review but at $120 thats a lot of bottled water but then again the lack of plastic waste is a bonus.

I travelled from Ushuaia to Canada on my bike and never bought bottled water once. I drank tap water the whole way and never once got sick from it, even in the middle of nowhere. Practice makes perfect and some manage to do it and some don't, but I got lucky this time.

My dad did however buy me a going away present - a SureAqua Straw +, but I never used it (shhhh). Another option there anyway...

-SureAquaStraw+ - a straw with a designed auto cut off feature that removes 99.9999% of bacteria and 99.99% of viruses including 99.9999% of Giardia and Cryptosporidium

SureAquaStrawplus