An Investigation of Water Quality Improvement Using a 3D-Printed Filter

Grade:

6

Teacher:

Jacko Kim Mabeza

Clean water is something many people take for granted, but not everyone has access to safe drinking water, especially during natural disasters or in communities with limited resources. This project became important to me because we wanted to understand how a simple, low-cost water filter could help improve water quality using basic materials and engineering ideas. Instead of relying on expensive systems, we wanted to explore whether repeated filtration could make dirty water clearer and safer. In this project, we designed and tested a simple engineered water filter and studied how filtering water multiple times affected its quality. We measured turbidity to see how cloudy the water was after each filtration pass, which helped me understand how well the filter removed small particles. We also measured how much water was recovered after filtration to see how practical the filter would be in real-life situations where water supply is limited. In addition, we measured the amount of sediment removed at each filtration stage to learn where most of the dirt was being captured. Through this investigation, we learned that engineering solutions often involve trade-offs. While filtering water more times made it much clearer and removed more sediment, it also caused the filter to hold more water, reducing the amount of usable water collected. This project helped us better understand how engineers must balance effectiveness and efficiency when designing solutions. Overall, this experience increased my interest in engineering and showed us how simple designs can make a meaningful difference in solving real-world problems.

Project presentation

Research paper