A new concept for household and large-scale safe drinking water production is presented. Raw water is
successively filtered through a series of sand and iron filters. Sand filters mostly remove suspended particles
(media filtration) and iron filters remove anions, cations, micro-pollutants, natural organic matter,
and micro-organisms including pathogens (reactive filtration). Accordingly, treatment steps conventionally
achieved with flocculation, sedimentation, rapid sand filtration, activated carbon filtration, and
disinfection are achieved in the new concept in only two steps. To prevent bed clogging, Fe0 is mixed
with inert materials, yielding Fe0/sand filters. Efficient water treatment in Fe0/sand filters has been extensively
investigated during the past two decades. Two different contexts are particularly important in this
regard: (i) underground permeable reactive barriers and (ii) household water filters. In these studies,
the process of aqueous iron corrosion in a packed bed was proven very efficient for unspecific aqueous
contaminant removal. Been based on a chemical process (iron corrosion), efficient water treatment in Fe0
beds is necessarily coupled with a slow flow rate. Therefore, for large communities several filters should
work in parallel to produce enough water for storage and distribution. It appears that water filtration
through Fe0/sand filters is an efficient, affordable, a flexible technology for the whole world.