The Water Filter Project
For this project my team and I were expected to make a functioning water filter out of cheap and reusable materials. After much research and experimentation, we came to a final design which scored a 26.4 on the turbidity test.
Designs and Ideas as well as finished product and coverage of said items.
We had several ideas, and several prototypes before finally landing at our final design which provided us with a 26.4 turbidity. Our first idea was a bucket with a coffee filter on the top, which we never even tried because that idea was obviously not going to work. The remainder of our prototypes gave the maximum turbidity with the exception of our one functioning filter. These prototypes all were inside of a plastic water bottle and consisted of charcoal, rocks, and coffee filters. The variety between all of them came from the extra parts, some had grass in them while some had sand. Judging by the results of these filters this made no difference. The real solution was found when we added multiple layers of coffee filters and a sponge at the top of the bottle. This design (from top to bottom) had a sponge, coffee filter, grass in a coffee filter, some cloth, rocks and charcoal, a coffee filter, some cotton, and finally another coffee filter wrapped around the bottom of the bottle with a rubber band. Overall I think the main contributors to our success were the excessive amount of coffee filters and the sponge at the top, the rocks and charcoal as well as the grass did their part in filtering it, but the main part was the addition of the sponge.
Gantt Chart
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Materials and Findings
Charcoal and Rocks were 2 materials we used in every experiment, they helped to filter the water even though we used store-bought charcoal which may have had chemicals in it. The grass also seemed to make little to no difference in the turbidity, but whether it be coincidence or not, the experiments where we used grass (and also sponges) were far more filtered than the ones without those. I believe that the sponge played a massive part in the turbidity being so low our final experiment. Coffee filters were mainly used to separate layers of materials and also to filter out any unwanted substances from making it through the filter.
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Material Research
Coffee Filter: 294.2 NTU
Charcoal: 239.7 NTU Fine Sand: 334.6 NTU Regular Sand: 334.6 NTU Stuffing: 334.6 NTU (NTU are the units used to depict turbidity) (I was absent this day so I have no picture of the tests, instead I have collected pictures of the used materials and have captioned them with the NTU collected) |
Phases of Development on the Filter
The slideshow to the right of this text shows many phases of our filters, some of them are of the same filter, while some of them are entirely different filters.
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Existing Solutions
Our Decision
The above picture shows our decision matrix and how it was scored. As seen above, the filter (consisting of coffee filters, charcoal, rocks, and grass) with the sponge scored the highest on the decision matrix. This was the design that scored us a 26.4 NTU rating.
Final Design and Sketch
My Team
Here, in this picture shows my team. To the left is me and I would like to point out that this picture was taken when I wasn't ready and that is why I look like a human abomination.
Revisions of Filter
After several attempts using basically the same filter but with varying amounts and order, we realized that that wasn't getting us anywhere and we were still hitting max turbidity. The big revision we made was adding a sponge and some mesh into the filter. This brought us from max turbidity to the lowest we got, 26.4
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A link to their website has been provided above.
Responsibilities
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:>-Conclusion-<:
This project was not my favorite, but it was kind of satisfying getting a good turbidity at the end. I missed the second day of the project so i don't really know what went down that day, but on all the other days I spent the entire period playing with the filter trying to get it to work better and find different ways to make it purify water. Teamwork-wise, Courtnee and I did pretty well I think, we both just threw stuff together and made new filters and tested them to see how it worked until we came to a working filter. In the future, my recommendations for this project are a) a shorter weebly b) no oral presentation, and c) maybe more time. I feel like if we had more time we may have been able to get a turbidity under 26.3 NTU.