Transforming rainwater to potable water for remote communities

This design addresses practical issues as it was designed to be used to supply water for remote communities in the Philippines, specifically, Smoky Mountain, where people live in poverty and suffer the following issues:

-Lack of access to clean water. The bio-sand filtration system provides fresh potable water for these people, where zero Therotolerant Coliform/E. Coli was detected from the filtered water using our design. The filter can deliver 336 Liters per day to serve 22 families in the Philippines.

-Low income. People in Smokey Mountain have less than 1$ per day as income. Therefore, our filtration system is affordable in these communities because it was designed to be constructed locally. It has no maintenance cost. Just cleaning!

-No infrastructure. It is hard to transport items from and to Smokey Mountain. The team designed the filter to be modular so it can fit a Bangka canoe, which has dimensions of 11 ft long by 22 inches wide by 23 inches high.

What makes this device so innovative, is that a person using this bio-sand water filtration device can collect freshwater, coming from rain, pour the contaminated water into the filtration device, and the filtration device will guarantee the output to be drinkable, removing the majority of the E. coli and pathogens from the water.

What makes this device special is that it doesn’t use any mechanical devices for the filtration device to work efficiently, which means that it uses no electricity for the device to function, but uses the simplest and most common material found. This device would only need approximately 2 hours to be completely built without any prior training or special equipment, given that the components are allocated, which is quite a short amount of time for a device that would have little to no maintenance for the next 5 years of usability.

Another factor that takes part in why the device is innovative is its portability. The device components can be transported independently, and then assembled at where the user would want the device to operate. The bio-sand filter is also easy to carry, as it would require only 2 people to move the components from one area to another. The bio-sand filter can become clogged up, but the solution is pretty simple, as it would just require someone to swirl the inside of the bio-sand filter with your hand to clear the pathway of the output.

The research that has been put into the water filtration device has been immense. What makes the device most effective is the engineering analysis and understanding of water flow in building the design. Because of the layered system we have designed in the bio-sand water filtration device, as well as the biolayer that grows naturally at the top of the filtration device, this helps in removing pathogens, as well as E. Coli from the water as the contaminated water goes through the levels of sand and gravel, making the output potable. The biolayer is a group of microorganisms that live on top of the sand layer, (top of the filter), that eat pathogens in the water, which makes it easier to filter the rest of the bacteria from the water as the water runs down through the filter.

We have validated our design solution by conducting different tests such as:

-Water Tests. We have constructed test tubes to test the effectiveness of different sand depths on the quality of the filtered water. The collected water is then tested for Therotolerant Coliform/E. Coli using the help of Dr. Dongyan Niu and Ms. Jenny Hyun. The performed tests in the lab were EC broth confirmatory test and m-Endo Agar results.

-Flow Rate Test. After running multiple tests on the bio-sand filtration device, as well as plotting the device analysis on MATLAB, we found that experimentally, the flow rate turned out to be 336L/Day. This means that this device, with the given parameters, can supply the daily needs of 22 families which exceeds our original requirement of 10 families by the cost.

This device is very feasible as it was meant to be constructed and used in remote communities by using a barrel and layering gravel and sand together to create a water filtration system. The device would cost approximately $25 CAD per family if it were built in the Philippines. Using a website named, Shopee.ph, a website similar to amazon but local to the Philippines, which is used for purchasing materials for cheap, such as home equipment, such as sand, gravel, and more, with very little transportation cost, this $25 CAD budget would be more than enough. This makes the device very affordable to the locals of Smoky Mountain. This means that if you were to buy the components of the filtration device and construct it from scratch, it will only cost a maximum of $25 CAD, and with the $25 CAD used, we can provide potable water for a family supplying a minimum of 15L/Day, depending on the size of the device. The $25 CAD also includes the cost of labor to build the device, as well as the transportation of the bio-sand filter.