Water Filtration

What Does It Look Like?

For the Water Filtration Project, we were given the task of filtering water that was contaminated with unknown substances. The filtration and sanitation of water is an extremely applicable engineering challenge, as millions of people around the world suffer from contaminated drinking water every day.

Project Goals:

Our goals for the project include:

Build a filtration system with given materials
Filter all medium to large particulate from the contaminated water
Learn about what filtration systems are currently available
Build an evaporation and condensation system to further clean water

Our Project:

We began our project by designing and building a filtration system using plastic water bottles, rocks, pebbles, sand, and filter paper. The first stage of our system has a plastic tube that extends from half of a water bottle. The plastic tube is closed using a spring clamp. When the water is poured in, this separation filter allows any substance less dense than the water to float to the top. When the clamp is released, only the water and heavy material is passed on to the next stage of filtration. After separation, the water is passed through a container of rocks, pebbles and sand. As the water passes through the gravel, it filters out all large particulate. The water is

then filtered through filter paper lined with activated carbon. When passing through the carbon, the water creates thousands of tiny paths, too small for any medium particulate to follow. The carbon takes out all color and smell from the water. The final product is a semi-clear, odorless water. The contaminated water contained used coffee grounds, vegetable oil, and garlic salt.

After successfully filtering the water through the primary system, we built a water evaporation device to complete the cleaning process. We built a wooden box to hold a metal can in place

in which we can boil water. There was room beneth the can to place a portable burner. We soldered a copper pike to the can as a way to channel the steam produced. As the steam traveled down the pipe, it passed through a condenser. The condenser was a 3D printed box that continuously passed cold water over the copper pipe, removing the heat from the steam allowing it to cool. After the water was cooled, it dripped out of the pipe and into a clean cup.

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