Rural Osmosis Water Filter

I was given the opportunity to address an issue in the world I felt strongly about and chose how to help communities whose water is affected by mining runoff using design and innovation.

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The chemicals in the water from mining runoff range from arsenic to cyanide so I had to develop a filtration system that would eliminate or at the very least reduce the amount of those chemicals to a safe level.

 

I evaluated current technologies ranging from electrolysis to reverse osmosis to Chlorination, comparing the costs of each. Electrolysis was too expensive, reverse osmosis would have required a 120 ft pipe to obtain the pressure required to passively filter water and Chlorination would have created Chlorine Cyanide as a byproduct. Designing for rural or underserved communities, cost has to be feasible for actual implementation. The initial goal was to create one for sub $100.  Another barrier would be the potential lack of electricity or infrastructure in those areas. 

 

Therefore, I went with a novel osmosis filter design and to further reduce the cost I went with a design that could be fused to the bottom of a blue water barrel to prevent chemical concentration from building up within the filter itself, I added drain hole to the design to remove the water over time. This reduced the buildup of chemicals in the unfiltered water since osmosis filtering would only pull out a percentage of the chemicals due to the size of the molecules.

 

I also had to calculate the surface area needed for the filter based on its permeation rate of the membrane to supply enough water for a family of four within a 24-hour period or roughly 100 gallons. The end result was a filtration system that cost about $106 per unit and could also be sold as a do-it-yourself module to further reduce costs.