Water filters can remove many contaminants, odours and bad tastes from the water and to do this, they use a variety of filter media. The filter media used by different companies will vary and understanding the effectiveness of filter media can help you compare different systems.
You will be able to check many of these filter media in riversands.com.au. A common filter media is activated carbon. This is something that many filtration systems use and it is very effective in filtering out common contaminants as well. And as this is an inexpensive material, it makes for a very convenient filter media. You can create activated carbon using any type of organic material that comes with a high carbon content. The most common source for this is coconut shells due to its environmental friendliness. There are different forms of activated carbon as well. One such example is catalytic carbon.

It is used to remove chloramine.
This is a common disinfectant used in many water disinfection systems around the world. While safe levels of cholramines are used for household water supply, it can still have an odd taste that you may not need and this might make the water unpalatable. So you can use this filter to remove the unpleasant odour and taste that chloramine gives the water.
You may have heard of RO or reverse osmosis membranes as these are so popular when it comes to water filtration. There is a variety of contaminants that can be removed this way and some of these are VOCs, heavy metals and bacteria. You will need to push water through the reverse osmosis membrane causing the contaminants to be trapped on one side of the membrane separating it from clean water on the other side. This type of filtration will lead to a considerable amount of waste water. You can reduce water soluble heavy metals and chlorines from the water using kinetic degradation fluxion which is known as KDF media for short. You can also reduce algae and bacteria in the water with this. This media contains zinc and copper particles. These particles are able to neutralize the contaminants and hold on to them.

UV light is used in filter systems in order to break down the cell walls of viruses and bacteria. This is an important step in making water safe to drink. And the use of UV light doesn’t cause the taste of water to change as there is no use of chemicals here. There are many contaminants that certain filters can miss and one such contaminant is hydrogen sulphide. If you smell rotten eggs in your water, this is the culprit. You can use manganese dioxide to remove this and it will also reduce some of the iron content in water. Ion exchange filters can remove calcium and magnesium from the water. This is used in areas with hard water so that you can have better tasting water. These filters are made from activated aluminium that binds to these contaminants.