Water Project

By: Tyler, Sebastian, and Lucy M

Our Plan
- Using evaporation to separate harmful substances from water
with solar power
- Collect the evaporated water and move it away from the dirty
water
- Planned to build a solar still. However, due to time
constraints and weather we were unable to do so
- Despite this we wanted to show that evaporation is a viable
way to clean water
Evaporation and Condensation
- Water is heated up and
molecules start moving faster
- Top layers turn into water vapor
- As the vapor gathers near the
top, the pressure increases and
the molecules are unable to
move

- Layers combine and turn into a

liquid
Why Use Evaporation/Condensation to Clean Water
- When water evaporates it
leaves the heavier ions behind,
like chlorine, cleaning the
water
- Most minerals that are in the
contaminated water have
much higher boiling points
- Pure water is leftover when
condencaded
Water Testing
- pond water, tap water, evaporated water
- We evaluated the water using several tests and investigated
the condensed water similarly.
- The water was evaporated by heating a flask with pond water
on a hot plate
- The water vapor went to the top of the bottle and into a tube
connected to a clean water flask.
Water Tests
pH
- the probability of hydrogen in a liquid
- It is an objective measure of the acidity in a fluid
- High pH levels on either side of the scale are dangerous due to
them disrupting human organs and cells
- The range for safe drinking water is 6.5 to 8.5.
Pond Water pH: 8.0 Evaporated Water pH: 4.5 Tap Water pH: 8.5
Ammonia
- toxic chemical compound found in pond
water
- 3 Hydrogen isotopes per Nitrogen isotope
- It is required to be removed from water to be
drinkable
- concentrated ammonia can bond with water
to make ammonium hydroxide when it
enters the body causing damage to the cells .
Pond Water Ammonia: 0.15 Evaporated Water Tap Water
ppm (Parts Per Million) Ammonia: 0.5 ppm Ammonia: 0.1 ppm
Chlorine
- chlorine kills bacteria and
viruses that commonly
grow in water supplies
- The safe range for chlorine
in water is 1-3 ppm. Any
water above 10 ppm can be
poisonous to the human
body.
Pond Water Chlorine: 0.2 ppm Evaporated Water Chlorine: 0 ppm Tap Water Chlorine: 0 ppm
Nitrate
- NO-3 or Nitrate, is a toxic compound if
consumed in high levels
- It is often found in small volumes in
drinking water
- Nitrate can make less oxygen available
for the human body to use
Pond Water: 0.2ppm Evaporated Water: 0 ppm Tap Water: 0 ppm
Improvements
- We were able to clean chlorine and nitrates from the water
but the ammonia nitrogen and ph levels rose making the
water less drinkable.
- This can most likely be attributed to chemicals in the
evaporated water flask and the tubing.
- To improve our experiment we would thoroughly clean our
materials to ensure no chemicals could populate the water
and build a proper solar still to see how effective it would be
and how much water it could yield.