The Effectiveness of Water Purification Systems on Decreasing Ion Concentration and the Level of Microorganisms

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of my project was to determine the efficiency of carbon, ceramic, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet purification systems of water. Their performances were determined by their effectiveness of filtering ions and bacteria. Methods/Materials Filtration: Tap water control, ultraviolet, carbon, and reverse osmosis, were repeated four times, 30 mL of tap water poured into one cup unless stated otherwise. The Hanna Instruments TDS meter was used to measure the total dissolved solids, in parts per million, of the trial. Ceramic had 1 Liter of tap water was poured and tested. Micro-organisms Growth Agar Plates: Repeated 24 times for each system to be plated onto 5 agar plates.Water was plated by syringe onto plate. Aerobic Agar Films: Repeated 19 times for each system to be plated onto 4 agar films.Water was plated by syringe onto film. Incubating the Agar:The agar & agar films were incubated and removed after 36 hours. Results Reverse osmosis filtration system removed 199 ppm, 93.77%, of the water#s ions.Ceramic processed water filtered out -186 ppm, -87.69% of the hydrated ions.The ceramic filtered plates had an average of 157 colonies per sq centimeter an average deviation of 32.2 colonies per sq centimeter.There was bacterial overgrowth in the trials shown-there were too many colonies to count.Ultraviolet Radiation filtered out an average of 2 ppm. Carbon Filtration filtered out an average of 22 ppm. For the bacterial growth in the agar plates and films: reverse osmosis, ultraviolet, and carbon had no growth in the agar plates or films. Conclusions/Discussion Osmosis was the most effective purification system, because of the semi-permeable membrane's indiscriminate filtration. Carbon#s lackluster performance was probably a result of an obstructed, overused carbon filter. Ultraviolet#s lack of filtration was expected; radiation does not filter. Ceramic must have added its own TDS by fragments of ceramics or silicon shells and added its own bacteria-despite the nano-silver impediment.

Competition history

• CSEF 2008 Environmental Engineering · Entry S0906

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Environmental Engineering projects
• CSEF Environmental Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2008 project