5/22/2018 - Week 8

According to last week's testing, we have not yet found a material or a prototype that can filter out the blue dye solutions, thus, today, we have to continued testing the different prototypes to see if it will capture the blue dye. Also, today, we decided to add a new material to our prototype - sand - to see if it will work in filtering the blue dye as we have saw working prototypes that use sand.

Prototype:
Inside a water bottle: layers of Cotton Pads (approximately an inch flat with spaces in between), Charcoal Powder (1 inch), Sand (2 inches)
We ran the red dye solutions through it, but the red dye bled through the cotton pads which the water came out pink. Therefore, we realized that we need to pour the solutions at the center of the filtration so that it could be concentrated at the middle. Also, the water came out really slow, which we think that the sand layer is too thick. 

Thus, we recreate the same prototype, but replacing the cotton pads and making it more tightly packed together and reducing the sand layer by 0.2 inch. 
We then ran another test of the red dye solutions and the water came out clear for the first few minutes.
However, then the red dye bled through the side of the cotton pads again and the water came out pink. In general, we know that our prototype works in filtering out the red dye solutions as long as it don't go through the sides of the cotton pads. Thus, we decided to add a thicker layer of cottons and charcoal powder.  The prototype filtered 200mL of red dye solutions in 11 minutes.
Again, we recreate the same prototype. This time, we used 1.5 inches of cotton pads tightly packed together, 2.5 inches of charcoal powder, 2 inches of sand. 
When we ran the blue dye solutions down the prototype, the water came out clear at first, but after adding more of the solutions, the water came out blue. This shows that the sand layer only work to a certain extent where it can capture the blue dye only in small quantity. 
The filtered blue dye solutions at first - water is clear
The filtered blue dye solutions after adding more of the solutions - water came out blue
Summary
Today, we tested sand to see if it will filter the blue dye solutions, unfortunately, it was not effective in capturing the blue dye at a large quantity. 

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