5/15/2018 - Week 7


Today, we continued testing our prototype, modifying the materials and arrangement of the layers to see if it will filter out the blue dye solutions as it has failed to do so last week.

Testing Prototype 1: 
Inside a water bottle: (2 layers of stacked Cotton Pads, 1 inch of charcoal powder, 2 layer of polyester fabric)
The first attempt (when we ran red dye solutions through the filtration) was a complete failure. The red dye solution was not filtered, rather, it passed straight through the charcoal layer and into the cotton pads. Thus, we figure that the charcoal powder layer was not enough to filter out the red dye solution, so we decided to add a thicker layer of charcoal powder plus an additional layer. 

We recreated the prototype, adding more charcoal powder and rearranging the layers.
Testing Prototype 2: 
Inside a water bottle: (2 layers of stacked Cotton Pads , a layer of polyester fabric, 2 inches of charcoal powders)
When trying to wash the charcoal powder, the water did not came out clear after running water through it several time. Thus, this prototype does not work at filtering tap water.

We decided to go back to our original prototype that seems to work in filtering the red dye solutions.
Testing Prototype 3: 
Inside a water bottle: (an inch of cotton pads, an inch of charcoal powder, and a layer of polyester fabric on top of the bottle)

This prototype, as expected, filtered out the red dye solutions. However, it still failed at filtering out the blue dye. The filtered water was coming out clear at the first few minutes when we added the blue dye, however, as we added more blue dye solutions the polyester was not effective in capturing the blue dye which some of the blue dye passed through the polyester layer and into the filtered water. Nonetheless, the water came out more clear with the addition of the polyester. 
This shows the filtered blue solutions at the first few minutes - the filtered water came out clear

This shows the filtered solutions as we added more blue dye - the filtered water appears to be blue
Summary
Today, we tested a few different prototypes with the addition of polyester to see if it will filter out the blue dye solutions. However, the new prototypes did not work, either in filtering the red dye or tap water. Therefore, we went back to our original prototype that had worked in filtering the red dye solutions and added the polyester layer on top. The prototype, as expected, filtered the red dye, however, it continued to failed at filtering the blue dye solution. Thus, we figure out that polyester is only effective at filtering a little amount of the blue dye solutions. So, for next week, we decided to try a new material to see if it will filter the blue dye - sand - as it seems to be working for other people.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5/8/2018 - Week 6

Image
According to last week's testing, that prototype failed to filter the blue dye solutions, thus, this week we had to revise our prototype and we decided to add more materials to the system. Prototype 1: Inside a pint container with a hole on the bottom: (a layer of coffee filter, layer of T-shirt, layer of Cotton Pads, Charcoal Powder, more cotton pads on top)   Result: The water still came out black after washing the charcoal several times, thus, the coffee filter and the T-shirt as the bottom layer does not absorb or catch the charcoal powder really well. Also, we felt that the coffee filter does not do anything to the filtration system (rather it absorb the diluted charcoal powder which then come along with the filtered water), so we decided to remove the coffee filter. Prototype 2:  Still, inside a pint container with a hole on the bottom: (a layer of T-shirt, thin layer of cotton pads, a thin layer of charcoal powders, a smaller layer of T-shirt, a tiny bit...
Read more

5/29/2018 - Week 9

Image
According to last week's testing, the existing prototype still fail to filter out the blue dye solution. Thus, we modified our prototype and decided to use some new materials - gravel - and we decided to mix the sand and charcoal powder and the gravel to see if it will be more effective. New Prototype: Inside a 2 liter bottle: 2 inches of cotton pads, 3 inches of charcoal powder/sand/gravel mix, 1/4 inch of sand, 1.5 inches of gravel We ran all three solutions into this filtration prototype, but we realized that some of the layers are too thick which the filtered water is coming out at a slow pace. And that we had too much gravel, especially in between the charcoal and sand layer. However, we did recognize that the filtered water came out clear which it seems that this prototype is working.  Thus, we recreate this prototype, but this time we remove the gravel from the charcoal/sand layer and reduce some of the gravel on the top layer.  This time, the water came ou...
Read more

4/24/2018 - Week 4

Image
Tap Water Testing Continued:  Prototype 1 : Inside a water bottle (Layers of Cotton Pads, Charcoal Powders, Shredded Printer Papers) with cotton pad taped to the opening of the bottle Result : The filtered water came out completely black where a lot of the charcoal powder came along with the filtered water. 1) Problems: Charcoal powder too powdery which can pass through the cotton pads and into the filter paper     Possible solutions: Put another water bottle at the bottle of the filter water bottle with layers of printed paper (similar to coffee filters) and layers of cotton pads to catch the charcoal powder from the filtered water Revised Prototype: Result:  The water still filter out black meaning some of the charcoal powder still came through the cotton pads and into the filtered water. However, this time less of the charcoal pass through as the water appears to be less black.  Possible Solution: (1) We decided to filter th...
Read more