St. Helens Water Filtration Micro Fibers

Did you know that we use a filtration process to help make St. Helens water safe to drink? 

The St. Helens Water Filtration Facility has four racks of filtration modules for filtering the water from our wells. These racks each contain 52 modules and each module is made up of 6,350 micro-fibers. That’s over 1.3 million microfibers used in our initial filtration process! 

These tiny fibers are hollow tubes with small holes (pores) in their walls. Because these pores are so tiny, it allows water to filter into the fibers while blocking out harmful bacteria, algae, silt, and other contaminants. 

How tiny are the pores? 

• Each pore is 100 nanometers wide (0.1 micrometers). 
• A small E. coli bacteria is two and a half times bigger than a pore. 
• A red blood cell is about 70 times larger in diameter. 
• A strand of spider web is about 45 times thicker. 
• A strand of human hair is 700 to 1,000 times wider. 
• The average piece of copy paper is 1,000 times thicker. 

You can find out more information about our St. Helens Water Filtration Facility on our website. 

Posted August 18, 2022