Potable Water Purifier

Abstract
Our simple and innovative design is aimed to tackle one of the most basic yet persistent problem in India, the problem of
safe drinking water. We created and worked on the design so that it finds its use in far off villages and localities which
may or may not have electricity. Our design does not require any external source of power, is light and handy. It can be
easily carried anywhere, like on treks and long trips. Our design is able to purify water taken from lakes, rivers or any
non-saline source of water.

Introduction
All too often we hear sad and frightening statistics about the hundreds of millions of people around the world without
access to safe, clean water and the resulting health burden. Our water purifier converts contaminated water into clean,
safe drinking water. The easy-to-use filters can be a vital tool for some of the 780 million people who dont have ready
access to safe drinking water. This leaves them at risk for diarrheal disease, which kills more than 1.5 million people
every year. Safe drinking water is especially important for vulnerable groups, such as children under five, pregnant
women and people living with HIV. Our water filter is designed for a specific situation where safe water is needed but not
readily available.

Theory behind our Design
Our filter has the following filtering layers-
Activated Carbon-
Activated carbon is a form of carbon processed to be riddled with small, low-volume pores that increase the
surface area available for adsorption. Due to its high degree of micro porosity, just one gram of activated carbon
has a surface area in excess of 500 m2, as determined by gas adsorption. Due to its high surface area per unit
volume, it is an excellent adsorbent. It adsorbs any gases which may be dissolved in water, it also stops the
particulate matter. Further activated carbon also removes any acids or bases dissolved in the water. The only
contaminants that can pass through the carbon filters are micro-organisms.


















Whatman filter paper-This is very common type of filter paper which is available in laboratories and is easily
available. This filter paper has a pore size of 11 microns.
Methodology
We decided to purify water by above mentioned layers and for that we made this primary design. We used the top half of
a plastic bottle cut into 2 as the container for holding the filtration layers. The topmost layer was activated carbon
followed by a layer of cotton and a cloth at the bottom of the system.


We observed that the above arrangement was able to filter muddy water efficiently. Thus we decided to the use
the same filtration layers but in a system which we could easily carry with us.

Designs Proposed

Screw-Piston System- We designed and manufactured a simple screw piston system which
can generate extremely high pressures and can be used with micron filters or RO filters or
even finer filters.
Piston-Cylinder System- This is a simpler design requiring comparatively less effort and the
piston generates pressure enough to increase the flow-rates by 3 folds.