Loading your lightweight bike down with heavy bottles full of water is a drag, but what else can you do on long rides? Especially if you don't use a hydration pack? Well, the Extract Water Filter lets you fill your bottle with water that you find along the way … and then safely drink it.
Currently the subject of an Indiegogo campaign, the Extract is designed to work with the Specialized Purist bottle. This model was chosen because it is one of the mostly commonly used and widely available cycling water bottles on the market.
The filter just screws onto the main body of the bottle, then the lid of the bottle in turn screws onto the filter. It's compatible with Specialized's WaterGate, MoFlo and MoFlo 2.0 Purist lids, and is made of food-safe BPA-free ABS plastic.
To use the setup, you just unscrew the lid/filter combo from the main bottle, fill that bottle with water gathered from a stream, river or lake, then put the lid/filter back on and squeeze the bottle to drink.
Doing so forces the water through the filter, which reportedly removes 99.9999% of bacteria, 99.99% of viruses and 99.95% of protozoa from the liquid. The filter is also claimed to remove microplastics, chemicals, sediment and heavy metals.
It does so via a combination of a positively charged filtration media, activated carbon and mechanical filtration. One filter should be good for the treatment of 150 liters (40 US gal), depending on how dirty the water is.
A one-way valve in the device allows air to flow back into the bottle after each squeeze, so the latter doesn't stay compressed.
Assuming the Extract Water Filter reaches production, a pledge of US$25 will get you one, while $30 will get you both a filter and a Specialized Purist bottle – the planned retail prices are $30 and $40, respectively.
The filter is demonstrated in the following video.
Sources: Indiegogo, Extract Water Filter