A Study of Effective Water Filtration Using Natural Resources - Grade 10 - 2020 SRS - 2020 SRS

Project Title: A Study of Effective Water Filtration Using Natural Resources Available in Puerto Rico 
School Name: Ramey Unit School
Student Name: Bria Roettger, Emely Arredondo, and Kailey Aponte
Grade Level: 10
Project Description: Environmental Problems and Solutions
Abstract: Puerto Rico is an island that is frequently under the threat of natural disasters, which can cut out power and leave many people homeless or lacking everyday resources, such as potable drinking water. Our team, Aguarico, decided to find a solution for this problem. Using previous research and experience as motivation, we developed our research questions: (1) How can we create an effective and easily-accessible water filtration system to ensure safety of water quality for people in Puerto Rico who may not have everyday access to potable drinking water, especially after a natural disaster? And (2) What are the similarities and differences between a filtration system using coconut husks, charcoal, and sand and a filtration system using banana peels, sand, and cilantro in the context of coliform, enterococci, dissolved oxygen, nitrates, water transparency, and pH? Based on these questions, we dove into experimentation with the two filtration systems. We found that our first prototype was able to remove all enterococci, E.coli, and coliform bacteria from both city and irrigation water samples Our second prototype, on the other hand, left one unit of enterococci bacteria in irrigation water. We also ran testing using GLOBE protocols, and compared and analyzed our data using graphs and charts. Overall, we determined that, while our first filter, which implemented coconut husks, coconut charcoal, and sand was more effective in purifying water, our second filter, which utilized banana peel, cilantro, and sand was more practical and easy to build. Both of these filtration systems proved to have a broad range of capabilities and potential for use in the aftermath of natural disasters. In the future, we hope to provide more outreach in our community to raise awareness about the usefulness of a natural, affordable filtration system, helping those without access to safe drinking water.
Protocols: Dissolved Oxygen, Water Temperature, pH, Conductivity
Language:  English

Hello Bria, Emely, and Kailey,
My name is Angela Chandler and I am a geologist with the Arkansas Geological Survey.  I am impressed with the amount of research and testing you have done.  You really put a lot of effort in to your research such as repeating your experiment to make sure all of your background bacteria was gone before your testing.  You have experienced how time consuming the scientific method can be but you also learned a great deal and how to be effective.  I commend you on putting your efforts into science and helping your community.  Your text was easy to read and follow, good job.  Good luck and I hope this leads to finding many more local commodities that can be used to lead to cleaner drinking water.  New scientific discoveries are often dictated by a need so keep on!

Hi, Bria, Emely, and Kailey -- my name is Barbara McGuinness, and I work in science communications and delivery for the USDA Forest Service. Thank you for your really interesting science project. I love that you addressed a need in your own community, and it is an issue of global importance. I also appreciate that you are building on previous work, and articulating how you can continue to work on this effort in the future. I notice you had some issues with cross-contamination, and it sounds like you made efforts to address this issue. How do you think you could consistently address this issue in future replications? How many replications do you think would show consistency in the data overall? It would be interesting to see multiple replications of the final designs. Maybe next time, you could include some diagrams of your filter design. I'm very tempted to try these experiments at home with local stream water. Thank you!

Hi Team Aguarico, my name is John FArver and I am a Geology Professor at Bowling Green State University where I have done alot of reseach on water quality. Your project was well thought out and I commend you for looking to employ scientific rsearch that can directly benefit society. I was wondering if you thought about whether the issues you identified in cleaning the filters would limit how the general public could make them? It was good to see the comparison to the commercially available filters but it might help readers if you expanded a bit on comparisons of how the different filters work and any cost issues. I hope you will continue to build on this very important research.