What is a Demineralizer?

One of the things that many people don’t realize is that water naturally has a great deal of minerals in it. This includes rainwater, saltwater, and freshwater. Many of these minerals in water are harmful to people and to animals. To avoid injury from consuming such harmful minerals, many people use a demineralizer.

The common perception of making water pure enough to drink is of a small filter attached to a kitchen faucet or office fountain, with the result being that “hard” water is turned to drinkable water. This is the same sort of idea behind the demineralizer except that the demineralizer goes the extra mile to get even more out of the water so that it can be accurately described as “ultra pure.”

This functionality of the demineralizer — the ability to make water ultra pure — is designed not only for water to be consumed by people and animals but also for water to be used in industrial machines. These sorts of machines require water that is very much pure water and very little else, and the demineralizer provides this. The more minerals that are in water that travels through pipes, the more those minerals tend to attach themselves to the pipes, resulting in corrosion. A demineralizer helps avoid this sort of pipe problem.

Because a demineralizer does so much more than a simple water filter, it is larger — sometimes much larger — in size as well. Some models of demineralizer are the size of a house water heater; others fill a large room. In all of these models, the minerals extracted from the water are kept in a bottle or other kind of receptacle for disposal as needed.

One kind of demineralizer that has nothing to do with drinking or industrial production is the kind found in shampoo. Many kinds of shampoo help prevent discoloration of hair caused by iron, copper, and other minerals. The water that comes out of bathtub faucets and showerheads is routinely not as well attended to as the water that is used for drinking, so it bathes your hair and scalp with slightly more minerals than you might otherwise drink. It’s the same sort of principle, but what is protected by this demineralizer is your hair.