Purifying Water via.

Charcoal method

Ayden Cintron

Abstract


Hypothesis

My Hypothesis is that my home water would be better, I'm pretty sure the charcoal and cloth won't be able to get the really small particles like my filters can will be able to get all of the bacteria. And that's what really counts. I'm not sure my filter can either but compared to the charcoal and cloth I feel my filtered water would have a better time dealing with the smaller particles of dirt.



Informational Essay


Some facts I found while researching for my project are that the cucumber has the most water in it, its 96%. Other fruits and veggies also have a large amount of water, around 80%. I also found that only 3% of all the water on earth is fresh, 2.5% of it is locked up in glaciers, snowfields etc. That means all humans and animals rely on that 0.5% of freshwater. a lot of that 0.5% is being polluted however. Now around 100 million animals die because of water pollution every year. A vulnerable animal is the sea turtle. Plastic waste that finds its way to the ocean is mistaken as food (jellyfish) to sea turtles. The turtle eats the plastic, if its a sharp plastic it can cause damage to internal organs, or a plastic bag can clog the turtles digestive system.


The biggest consumer of fresh water is agriculture. It makes up for 70% of the water we take from lakes aquifers etc. Agriculture also pollutes water, but its a necessity. Sewage leakages and companies constantly dumping their sewage into lakes is preventable and can be stopped but isn't. Now I will bring to your attention water borne diseases. On average around 3.4 million people die from water borne diseases. A part of those numbers are from hepatitis A. Hepatitis A (HAV) is a waterborne virus and is spread by close contact with another infected person or getting it by having seafood containing or somewhere along the line having something that contained contaminated water. around 23,000 cases of hepatitis a occur every year. The number has decreased 95% from the mid 90's to now. the main disease responsible for 3.4 million is mainly cholera diarrhea.


Diarrhea is a disease caused by dehydration or cholera bacteria, in 2017 the disease had killed 1.6 million people over the globe. More than suicide, terrorism and homicide combined. Cholera (vibrio cholerae) is a bacteria that resides in contaminated water, that causes severe watery diarrhea that can be fatal. Getting a little more positive, clean water access. 71% of the human population does have access to clean water (Later this number is expected to fall). This means 29% of the human population does not have access to adequate drinking water. Of that 29%

18% does not have access to sanitized enough water, which means 11% doesn’t have access to at all, or only has very basic water sanitation systems.


80% of the wastewater we produce is dumped back into the ocean largely untreated, because of this the most polluted river in the world is the Citarum river in Indonesia. The Citarum river 230km long, and, The reason It's so polluted is largely our doing. The river is so polluted the locals around there are constantly being poisoned by the dioxins and hydrocarbons the water releases. Around 5 million people live in the rivers basin. A large amount of the 5 million people's daily life are affected by the pollution of the river. People aren't doing much to help the rivers situation. Over 2,000 industries contribute to polluting the river with toxins. The river hasn't met the government's water quality standards since 2001, and it most likely won't ever meet the standards again.



Materials

  1. 3 cups ( 1 with dirty water )

  2. 3 6 in 1 test strips

  3. 6 pieces of cloth

  4. activated charcoal

  5. a rubber band

  6. smooth stones

  7. a bottle with bottom part cut off

  8. coffee filter

  9. a book or something with words on it


Procedure

  1. get cup, fill it up with non filtered water, go outside and put dirt in the non purified water

  2. stir up the mixture then take all the big pieces of dirt and grass out by setting up a cup, putting a shirt on top of it and pouring the water in then boom dirty water

  3. test the dirty water with a test strip

  4. write down measurements

  5. get out 2nd cup

  6. set up first charcoal method by stuffing coffee filter on the top of cup

  7. put 1st piece of cloth above coffee filter then put activated charcoal in there

  8. then close it with 2 more pieces of cloth

  9. pour water on top of the cloth and wait a bit to make sure you get enough water to take notes on. (Don't poor all of it, you need some for other form of this filter.)

  10. once you get enough, its your choice to keep or throw away charcoal, I threw it away.


  1. If you're going to do it again you can repeat the steps.

  2. at this point use book to test cloudiness of the first method

  3. set up 2nd method by getting a cup, put the part of the bottle that isn't cut off on the cup, put a coffee filter inside bottle, put a piece of cloth on top of that.

  4. pour activated charcoal on cloth then close it with another piece of cloth then pour a cloth that wont leave any openings for dirty water to get through above that (or sand) then put smooth stones on top of that. put another piece of cloth that wont let water get through without going through it on top of that (or sand), then put the rest of stones on that your set.

  5. pour the rest of dirty water on the rocks, and wait a bit for it to be done.6 in 1 test strip and write down the results.

  6. use book to test out cloudiness on the water then see which one was more readable, and by how much.

  7. this can be done at any time but use another cup, fill it up with filtered water give it a test and compare it to both charcoal method results.



Results

After doing the first method, both times, It was slightly cloudy. The rock method was clearer. however It was still slightly foggy compared to my home water.

Conclusion

My Experiment is about purifying water by the means of charcoal. I predicted the charcoal methods wouldn't be as effective at purifying water. My hypothesis was accurate and incorrect. what I measured from the charcoal and my filtered home water, were pretty similar. The only difference between my home water and the rocks and cloth method was the pH levels. If I were to do this experiment again I would measure more than just pH, Chlorine, Hardness, Nitrate, Nitrite, Alkalinity, and cloudiness. If I were to repeat this experiment I would measure bacteria.

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