From time to time we are asked how the water in our wipes is purified. We want all our customers to be knowledgable on the important points of baby wipes, so we thought it worthwhile to write a short newsletter on the topic!

All modern baby wipes facilities use highly purified water for obvious reasons, and the technology these days is very strong. Even if very dirty, contaminated water was fed into the machines, it would come out the other end fit for the Queen to drink!

There is a complicated 6 stage process worthy of an entire textbook to explain properly, but it can be summarized below:

Step 1 – source water goes through a primary filter, and is then sampled for testing.

Step 2 – Ultrafiltration (UF) is applied next. This is a pressure-driven barrier to suspended solids, bacteria, viruses, endotoxins and other pathogens, and produces water with very high purity. It is a variety of membrane filtration in which hydrostatic pressure forces a liquid against a semi permeable membrane.

Step 3 – Ultra Violet (UV) light disinfection is next, and this system can remove most forms of microbiological contamination from water including bacteria and viruses. UV light is energetic enough that it can break chemical bonds, killing microbes.

Step 4 – Reverse Osmosis is then applied. This is a treatment process that removes contaminants by using pressure to force the water molecules thorugh a semipermeable membrane. Another sample is taken for testing at the conclusion of this step.

Step 5 – The water is then taken through an electrodeionization (EDI) unit, which is a technology that uses electricity, ion exchange membranes and resin to remove ionized species from the water.

Step 6 – UV Light disinfection is again applied as a last step before a final sample is tested in the lab. The purified water ends up in the mixing tanks where other ingredients are added to make up the baby wipes solution.

The combination of each of these robust purification methods produces extremely pure water that can be safely used in cosmetic products such as baby wipes.

Well, that was some heavy reading now wasn’t it! For those who made it to the end I hope it was helpful in describing the process and you feel you understand it a little better now.