5/8/2018 - Week 6


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 of charcoal and a few cotton pads  to finish it up)

Result: The water successfully came out clear after running water into the system a couple of time. However, it failed to filtered the red dye solution. This seems to not work because we had a thin layer of cotton pads as opposed to a thick layer like last week. The thin layer of cotton pads was not effective in absorbing the solution, thus, we decided to add another layer of cotton pads at the bottom of the T-shirt layer and another layer of T-shirt along the first layer of T-shirt.

Prototype 3:
We added another layer of cotton pads and T-shirt as the bottom layer.


                       
The filtered red dye solution where the filtered water came out completely pink


Result: The prototype once again failed in filtering the red dye solution. At first, we tried filtering 50 mL of the solution, but nothing was coming out, thus, we think that the materials have absorbed the solution and that the cotton pads are too thick which it is hard for the system to filter anything out. When we added more of the red dye solutions, the water being filtered is really pink meaning that the red dye solution has not been filtered. 

Prototype 4:
We decided to go back to last week's prototype (an inch of of cotton pads and an inch of charcoal powder) as it seems to be working in filtering the red dye solution. However, this time we added a T-shirt layer between the cotton pads and the charcoal powder and we used 1.5 inches of cotton pads and 1 inch of charcoal. 

The filtered red dye solution - the water came out completely clear
The filtered blue dye solution - the water came out blue
Result: This prototype, as expected, successfully filtered out the red dye solution. It filtered 70 mL of the solution in 6 minutes. However, it still did not pass the blue dye solution and it took longer to filter, 70 mL in 7 minutes. 

Summary:
Today, we tested four different prototype, however, at the end, we decided to go back to our original prototype from last week. The revised prototypes did not work in filtering the red dye solution, but the prototype from last week did work. However, it still did not pass the blue dye solution test, thus, we decided to add polyester and possible balloon to our prototype for next week to see if it will filter out the blue dye, the ion charged in the blue dye. 

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