What is a Micron?
If you have looked at the filters on our site – or if you rent or buy an Aqualeader mains-fed watercooler, boiler or home filtration system with a filter attached to the machine – you will notice the filters usually show a micron rating (for example most coolers use 1 micron carbon block filters) – but what is a micron?
Well, to put it simply, a micron (μm), aka micrometre, is a unit of measurement for a length equal to 1 millionth of a metre, if that is hard to get your head round then would it help if I told you that was equivalent to 0.001mm (or 0.000039 inches)! Obviously that is a VERY small measurement – which is why it is usually used to measure the width or diameter of truly tiny things – microcopic objects – things like microorganisms, cells and bacteria which are invisible to the naked eye.
So when a filter is referred to as a 1 micron carbon block filter, what does that mean? It means that the holes/pores in the filter are only 1μm wide – so when water passes through the filter any particle larger than 1μm is unable to pass through.
Lets take a look at what that means by looking at the relative sizes of different things in micrometres
| Bacteria | .5 – 50 μm |
| Pollen/ | 10-90 μm |
| Human Hair | 80 – 90 μm |
| Spider Web | 2-3 μm |
| Table Salt | 120 μm |
| Eye of a needle | 1230 μm |
| Plant Spores | 10-40 μm |
| Pin Point | 75 μm |
| Dust | .5 – 5 μm |
| Mould Spore | 10 – 30 μm |
We supply filters when we service machines, but we also have a range of filters available to buy at Aqualeader – for coolers and home filtration systems we usually recommend 1 micron carbon block filter , but for boilers we would normally recommend a scale reduction filter from our IEN range.
