April 17, 2018 - Week 3


Tap Water Testing

In this week's lab, we tested how well each of our three layers filtered out tap water. To do this, we measured the layer thickness, how much water was to be filtered, how much water was recovered after filtration, the time it took to filter the water through each layer, and the percent efficiency of the filtration system.

First Test
For our first test, we filtered tap water through a 2.5 inch thick layer of a cotton t-shirt. We used 170 mL of water for this filtration. After we poured the water into the bottle containing a filter, it took 45 seconds for the water filtration to be completed. We measured that we had recovered about 86 mL of water, meaning that our t-shirt filter had a 50.6% efficiency.

Second Test
For our second test, we filtered tap water through a 2.5 inch layer of paper. This time, we used 190 mL of water, and it took 17 seconds for the water to be done with its filtration. We recovered 152 mL of water in this test, leading to an 80% efficiency for this filter. However, because of the speed of this filtration, we are unsure of paper's effectiveness in the filtration process.

Third Test
For our third layer test, we filtered tap water through a 2 inch layer of powdered activated charcoal. We filtered 180 mL of tap water through the filter in about 15 seconds. We recovered 144 mL after the filtration was completed, marking an 80% efficiency for this layer's filtration. However, after our filtration, we noticed that the water had turned black. Therefore, if we are going to be using charcoal in our filtration system, then we will need to filter out charcoal bits through another filter for the water to be clear as it comes out of the filter.

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