Results

In the economic plots, the mangrove-like filter seems to be the most economic, by producing the most water and costing the least. In 60 minutes, the mangrove filters would most likely produce 88520L, whereas distillation would produce 0.95L. In the "Cost to Filter" plot, we can see that distillation is orders of magnitude higher in cost than the mangrove-like filter. The mangrove filter requires only the cost of electricity to pump the water, and centrifugal pumps are relatively low cost to run. Distillation, on the other hand, requires the cost to heat the water to boiling, and to cool the water. This would cost much more than running a centrifugal pump. The total cost for distillation is much higher than that of our mangrove filter, even excluding the initial cost to build. This is most likely due to the high cost to run the distillation plant.

Figure 6 illustrates the environmental impact of the filters. The water wasted in distillation is much higher per liter due to cooling. Distillation uses one liter of water to cool every 6 liters of distilled water. There should be no water wasted in the mangrove filter method, but 1% was removed to account for leaks. The electricity used is much greater in a distillation system, as the energy required to heat up large amounts of water is sizeably larger than the energy required to run a pump.