Filters for All

    This is my 7th action project, in which we had to design a water filter. Water filtration has been the main thing we've discussed in this unit. We even went to a water filtration plant here in Chicago. It was a very insightful experience, although I would rather not go again. It was very deep underground and very loud, both things I didn't like. However, seeing all the work that goes into ensuring our water is clean was still very interesting. In class, we've also discussed ppm (parts per million), atoms, molecules, and logs. I found it to be quite nice. It was a lot of work at times, but nothing impossible.    

For this experiment, I wanted to know if I could make a water filter by myself. My design was the top of a plastic jug. The inside of the jug had 3 layers. The 1st was activated carbon (to filter the water), the 2nd was a coffee filter (to separate the layers), and the 3rd was cotton balls (for the water to soak through instead of just common right out.) After the water had filtered, it would go through the coffee filter and the cotton balls and into the cup. This is what the sketch looked like.

When I made the filter, I had access to more materials, so the actual filter had 2 extra layers of sand and clay. I also didn't get any coffee filters, so the layers weren't completely separated. 

The finished product looked like this.
 To test our filters, we used water with dirt in it. To check if the water had actually filtered or not, we used a PPM measurer. The PPM measured the TDS (total dissolved solids) of the water. The higher the PPM, the more TDS in the water. Before filtration, the dirty water had 824 ppm. I believed that this number would go down by about 50.

After the filtration process, the water had 945 PPM. The water looked somewhat green compared to the dirty water.
After filtration, the water had a change of 14.68%, meaning the water got dirtier after filtration. To get an idea of how much dirtier it got, this is the TDS of salt water, distilled water, Chicago water, this water before filtration, and this water after filtration. The closer the number is to -1, the more TDS in the water.

Although the change is small, the water still didn't filter. I think the water didn't filter because it had too many layers on top of each other, and not a lot blocking the layers from each other. Regardless, this was still an enjoyable experiment. If I were to do it again, I would try to have the layers better separated. In the end, though, I had fun making and designing this filter.

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