How To Make A Water Filter With Activated Charcoal

Which Filtration Material Leads to the Best Drinking Water?

Abstract

Exercise you filter your tap h2o before drinking? Many commercials claim these filters make your drinking water cleaner and safer. Only what, exactly, are these filters doing and is the water really cleaner afterwards? The cleaning ability comes from their filling material, chosen activated carbon. It exists in all kind of forms: powder, granules, foams, and blocks. Practise you lot recollect it matters what type of activated carbon is inside the filter? In this activeness you lot will investigate whether larger or smaller particles of activated carbon work improve for cleaning drinking water—with results you can see!

Summary

Short (ii-5 days)

None

Readily available

Low ($20 - $50)

Avert dispersing the powdered activated carbon into the air and endeavor not to breathe in the particles.

Svenja Lohner, PhD, Science Buddies

Alex Andres, Laboratory Banana, UC CEIN
Courtney R. Thomas, PhD, Education Coordinator, UC CEIN
Catherine Nameth, PhD, Former Education Coordinator, UC CEIN

This science project is a collaboration between Scientific discipline Buddies and the Education Division of California (UC) Center for Ecology Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN).

Objective

Investigate how the particle size of activated carbon affects drinking water filtration efficiency.

Introduction

Clean water is an essential role of life. Just think about how often you use h2o every day—for cooking, drinking, washing your clothes and dishes, brushing your teeth, or showering. Y'all wouldn't want to do this with dirty water, right? Filtration is one important stride in water cleanup. During the filtration procedure, particles or impurities such as chemicals and leaner are separated from the solution that is filtered. The method of separation tin can exist mechanical, physical, chemical or even biological. To notice out how water filters work, it is probably best to have a expect inside the filter. Most of the filters that are used for home water handling are carbon filters. That means the material inside the filter is carbon or a special form of it, called activated carbon or activated charcoal, which is shown in Figure 1.

What makes activated carbon special is that it is a very porous form of carbon—almost like a sponge. Information technology has many tiny microscopic pores that can soak upwards water or gases. Also, the surface of activated charcoal is not polish—if you lot wait under the microscope you lot see that the particles have a very crumbly shape equally shown in Effigy 2. All these fiddling micropores, together with its rough surface, create a huge surface surface area for each particle. Nearly five teaspoons (ten grams) of granular activated carbon has a surface area that is approximately the surface area of a football game field!

This massive area gives activated carbon unique properties. When water or liquid travels through the porous structure of the filter, impurities (such as modest amounts of chemicals or metals) can be removed past a process called adsorption. Adsorption occurs when compounds physically or chemically adhere to the carbon surface. Physical or chemical trapping happens due to van der Waals forces, weak forces that exist between molecules or particles that tin be attractive or repulsive, as well as to chemical bonding on the carbon surface. This is why the surface expanse, or the surface area to volume ratio, of the activated carbon matters. The more expanse (surface area exposed to the surroundings), the more possible bonding sites there are for contaminants. If all the bonding sites are taken upward, then the impurities remain in the water and it is fourth dimension to replace your water filter.

Activated charcoal can come up in many forms and particle sizes (some of them are shown in Effigy ane). The 2 types yous volition be using in this experiment are the granular and powder forms. Granular carbon can be compared to pocket-sized pebbles, while powdered carbon can exist compared to fine sand. Looking at Figure 3, you tin recollect of the left cube as the granulated carbon and the smaller cubes as the powdered carbon. They both have the aforementioned book (a total of viii minor cubes), but the surface surface area exposed to the surrounding is much larger with the 8 individual cubes compared to the one large cube. Therefore, the granular form has a smaller expanse to volume ratio than the powder grade.

Too the surface area to volume ratio, the time the water spends in contact with the activated carbon is besides an important gene that determines the efficiency of the filtration process. The longer the contact time or the slower the menstruum rate of the h2o through the filter, the more than adsorption tin can take place. You will see for yourself in this project when you clean up colored tap h2o with activated carbon. Which textile do you think will be meliorate to make clean up your water, powdered or granular carbon?

Terms and Concepts

• Filtration
• Carbon filter
• Activated carbon, or activated charcoal
• Surface expanse
• Adsorption
• Van der Waals forces
• Surface area to book ratio
• Particle size
• Contact time

Questions

• What are typical uses of activated carbon?
• Why does the form of activated carbon and its particle size matter for filtration?
• How do carbon filters clean contaminated drinking water?
• Can yous think of other processes or reactions in which the particle size or surface area to volume ratio matters?

Bibliography

• Science News. (2006, November viii). Activated-Carbon Filtering Pitcher Significantly Reduces Chemicals in Tap Water. Science Daily. Retrieved Jan 17, 2017.
• McGrath, J. (2012, April 10). How are adsorbents used for environmental cleanup? HowStuffWorks.com. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
• Lemley A., Wagenet 50., Kneen B. (1995, December 3). Activated Carbon Treatment of Drinking Water. Water Treatment Notes, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Higher of Human Environmental. Retrieved January 17, 2017.

For help creating graphs, try this website:

• National Center for Education Statistics, (n.d.). Create a Graph. Retrieved June 25, 2020.

Materials and Equipment

• Granulated activated charcoal; available from Amazon.com
• Powdered activated charcoal; bachelor from Amazon.com
• Plastic cups (no lids necessary), transparent twenty oz (xc, 30 per trial); available from Amazon.com
• Food color (green, blue or red work well); available from Amazon.com
• Spoon
• Tap water
• Coffee filters (bleached or unbleached), size four for 20 oz cups (108, 36 per trial); available from Amazon.com
• Rubber bands (9)
• Measuring cup
• Timer
• Paper towels
• Scale that tin can mensurate in 0.1 g increments. A digital scale that would exist suitable is the Fast Counterbalance MS-500-BLK Digital Pocket Scale; available from Amazon.com.
• Permanent marker
• Optional: Camera (phone or digital)
• Optional: Computer with admission to the internet, and permission to apply it.
• Lab notebook

Disclaimer: Scientific discipline Buddies participates in affiliate programs with Home Science Tools, Amazon.com, Carolina Biological, and Jameco Electronics. Proceeds from the affiliate programs help support Science Buddies, a 501(c)(iii) public clemency, and keep our resources free for everyone. Our top priority is educatee learning. If you accept any comments (positive or negative) related to purchases you've fabricated for science projects from recommendations on our site, please permit united states of america know. Write to us at scibuddy@sciencebuddies.org.

Experimental Process

In this experiment y'all will filter three water samples with unlike "contaminant" (food color) concentrations using three different filtration conditions (granular activated carbon filter, powdered activated carbon filter and no carbon filter). Once you have completed the filtration, you can appraise the filtration efficiency of each filter by looking at the color modify of your samples.

Preparing Your Samples and Filters

In this section, you will prepare a full of 21 cups: 3 cups with different food color solutions, 9 cups with either no carbon, granulated carbon, or powdered carbon (3 of each type), and 9 filtration cups (empty cups with filters fastened).

1. First, y'all will set the water samples that you are going to filter. Y'all will use food color as a model contaminant that needs to exist removed from the water. Prepare three food colour solutions, each with a different dye concentration.
   1. With a permanent marker, characterization three cups, one for each dye concentration: 0 drops per loving cup of liquid, ii drops per loving cup of liquid and 5 drops per loving cup of liquid.
   2. Measure out 2 cups (about 500 mL) of tap water into each plastic cup using the measuring cup.
   3. You volition only add together food colour to two of the iii cups as shown in Figure 4. The first loving cup (0 drops per loving cup of liquid) will remain colorless. As yous take 2 cups of liquid in each of your cups, yous have to add 4 drops of food color to the cup that you labeled with 2 drops per loving cup of liquid and ten drops of food color to the cup that yous labeled 5 drops per cup of liquid.
   4. Stir each of the solutions with a clean spoon to disperse the nutrient color evenly.

2. Next, fix the activated carbon for your filter. You volition test 3 different experimental conditions (granular activated carbon, powdered activated carbon and no activated carbon) for each of the dye concentrations.
   1. Every bit you volition test all three dye concentrations, you have to label 3 cups for each form of carbon you exam. You can brand up your own labeling abbreviations such equally "PC" for powdered carbon and "GC" for granulated carbon. Your label should tell what form of carbon and what dye concentration y'all volition use (0, two or 5  drops per loving cup of liquid) for that cup. At the cease, y'all should have 9 labeled cups.
   2. Use a scale to weigh out 3 grams of granular activated carbon into each cup that y'all labeled with granular carbon. Then add 3 grams of powdered activated carbon into each cup with the corresponding label. The remaining 3 cups (no activated carbon) stay empty. Note: Avoid breathing in the activated carbon powder and try not to disperse too much of the powder into the air.
   3. You lot should accept 3 empty cups and half-dozen cups filled with activated carbon: 3 cups with the powdered form and three with the granular form.
3. Side by side, y'all volition set filters for the unlike forms of activated carbon and dye concentrations.
   1. Label nine cups in total, one for each testing condition. Again, make sure that your label is specific to the type of activated carbon and the dye concentration that you are going to test.
   2. Take 4 coffee filters and stack them into each other. As shown in Figure 5, press the filters into the top of a cup, fold their edges over the cup's rim, and secure them with a rubber ring.
   3. Repeat stride b. for the remaining filtration cups.

Filtering Your Samples

In this department, y'all will prepare an additional 9 cups for your colored water samples. When starting your filtration process, you lot should have a gear up of ix cups for each experimental condition (27 cups total).

1. Earlier you starting time the filtering process, prepare your water samples for each filter using the water samples you prepared in step one of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters".
   1. For each experimental condition (granular activated carbon, powdered activated carbon and no activated carbon), label 3 fresh cups with 0 drops per cup of liquid, two drops per cup of liquid and v drops per cup of liquid.
   2. With a measuring cup, add together 0.v cups (about 120 mL) of the dye solutions that you prepared in step 1 of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters", to each of the cups with the respective label. Note: You lot will have 0.v cups dye solution left over that y'all can use at the finish of the experiment for color comparison.
   3. Before yous switch to the next dye concentration, rinse out the measuring loving cup and make clean information technology with a paper towel.
   4. Practice not add together the solutions to the prepared charcoal cups yet!
2. Arrange all your prepared cups as shown in Figure 6. For each experimental condition and dye concentration, place the colored water sample, the activated carbon and the filtration cup next to each other. You should accept a set of nine cups for each of the 3 experimental conditions (27 total).

3. Before you first with your filtration experiment, prepare a data table such equally Tabular array ane in your lab notebook. Re-create this table into your notebook three times, once for each blazon of carbon (granular activated carbon, powdered activated carbon, no activated carbon).

4. Yous will charge per unit the color of your water samples on a scale from 0–10, where 0 is totally articulate (the cup on the left in Figure four) and ten is the darkest (the loving cup on the right in Figure 4). You will accept to choose a number to assign to the intermediate cup, which may vary slightly depending on the type or colour of food colour you use. We chose to assign a value of seven to our 2 drops/cup of liquid sample, since information technology is fairly dark.
5. Assess all your water samples before the filtration. Within a specific dye concentration, they should all wait the same. As mentioned in stride 4, they all will start out with an assigned color number before filtration. These will exist your starting (before filtration) values.
6. If y'all have a photographic camera available, take a photo of all your solutions before starting the filtration. This volition be helpful for your brandish board. Make sure that all the pictures are taken with the same lighting, background, and photographic camera settings (information technology is probably best to use a white background) so you tin can compare them to each other. Note: You lot tin use the left-over dye solutions that y'all prepared in the starting time every bit a colour reference for "before treatment" samples.
7. Continue with the filtration. You can do the following steps either back-to-back or set them up and run them at the same time.
   1. Start with the filtration experiment using granular activated carbon.
      1. Pour each concentration of the prepared dye solutions into the corresponding cups containing the granular activated carbon that y'all prepared in footstep two of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters".
      2. Fix your timer to 10 minutes and quickly stir each solution with the activated carbon using a make clean spoon.
      3. After 10 minutes, pour the water and carbon mixture into the filters that you prepared in step 3 of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters," and permit the water seep through the filters. Note: Make sure that the water drains out of the filters completely and collects in the cup below the filter. There should not be any water remaining in the filter. If the the water level reaches the bottom of the filter in one case it has seeped through, either choose a larger loving cup or use shorter, basket shaped coffee filters instead of the longer, conical ones.
   2. Side by side, continue with the filtration experiment using powdered activated carbon.
      1. Slowly cascade each concentration of the prepared dye solutions into the respective cups containing the powdered activated carbon that you prepared in step 2 of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters". Of import: Pour slowly so you lot avoid creating a lot of pulverisation dust in the air.
      2. Set your timer to 10 minutes and quickly stir each solution with the activated carbon using a clean spoon.
      3. Afterwards 10 minutes pour the h2o and powdered carbon mixture onto the filters that yous prepared in pace 3 of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters" and allow the water seep through the filters. Make certain that no water is staying inside the filters.
   3. For the filtration experiment using no activated carbon, pour each of the prepared water samples onto the filtration cups prepared for this condition in pace 3 of "Preparing Your Samples and Filters". Again, let the h2o seep through the filters completely.
8. Allow the solutions in each loving cup seep through the iv layers of coffee filter. Write downwardly your observations about the nerveless water samples afterwards filtration in your lab notebook. Did any of the water samples change color? Exercise you observe a difference depending on dye concentration or type of activated carbon?
9. Assess the color of all the filtered water samples. Carefully remove the coffee filters to have a meliorate look inside the loving cup. Assign each of the h2o samples a color number based on the color calibration described in footstep 4. Write downward your results in your data tabular array.
10. If you take a camera available, have a photo of all the solutions that you collected in the filtration cups after the filtration experiment. Over again, this will be helpful for your brandish board. Make sure that all the pictures are taken with the same lighting, background, and camera settings that you used in stride 6 (it is probably best to use a white background) and then you lot tin compare them to each other.
11. Once y'all have filled out your data for trial 1, gear up and perform two more filtration trials starting with "Preparing Your Samples and Filters". Responsible scientists ever practice their experiments at to the lowest degree three times to ostend that their results are ever showing the aforementioned tendency, meaning that they are reproducible.

Analyzing Your Data

1. Calculate the boilerplate color rating for each of your water samples after handling. To do this, for each of your samples add the colour values from each private trial and then split up the result by 3. Write down the average into your data table.
2. Compare the boilerplate color values that you wrote down for each experimental condition before and after the filtration. Tin can you see a trend in your data? Did your water samples go less colored or fifty-fifty colorless after filtration? Did the filtration fabric or the dye concentration make a difference?
3. More advanced students can do more quantitative measurements of the h2o colors, using a color picker tool online. Looking at each of your filtered h2o samples, select the corresponding color from the color palette for each one. You can use the left-over dye solutions that you prepared in the beginning every bit reference for the "before treatment" samples. The tool gives yous color values for H (Hue), S (Saturation), B (Brightness) and R (Red), G (Green) and B (Blue). Stay within the aforementioned Hue for your color assessment (keeping the arrow on the right bar stock-still at one setting) and for each selected color write downwardly the colour saturation (S) and effulgence (B) value. Calculate the average of your determined brightness and saturation values from the iii trials for all your experiments. Annotation: With lighter colors of your water samples, you should see an increasing value for brightness.
4. For each blazon of carbon (granular carbon, powdered carbon and no activated carbon) make a bar graph comparing the observed color (either using the average color numbers or for more avant-garde students the average brightness values) before and afterward filtration. On the x-axis put the dye concentration (0, 2 and v drops/cup of liquid) and on the y-centrality graph the average color number (or if you chose the color picker tool, the average colour effulgence values) before and subsequently the filtration process. You tin either make a split graph for each dye concentration or use one bar graph with different colors indicating the different dye concentrations. The Bibliography lists an online graphing tool that can help yous create graphs.
5. If yous chose to utilize the color picking tool, brand another graph similar to that in step 4, but this time plot your boilerplate saturation values on the y-centrality.
6. When using the color picker tool, remember that the higher your brightness values are, the clearer your water is. A higher saturation value ways that the water is more than colored. A combined saturation value of 0 with a effulgence value of 100 ways that your water is articulate and has no color anymore!
7. Comparison all your graphs, can y'all tell if granular or powdered carbon is the more efficient filter using a contact time of 10 minutes? How practise you remember you can improve the efficiency of your filters?

Ask an Expert

Practise you accept specific questions well-nigh your science project? Our team of volunteer scientists can aid. Our Experts won't do the work for you, but they will make suggestions, offer guidance, and help yous troubleshoot.

Variations

• In this project you used the same corporeality of activated carbon for each experimental condition. Do you call up the results will change when yous use more, or less activated carbon? Repeat this experiment but this time vary the amount of activated carbon you put into your filters. Y'all tin either cull another corporeality of activated carbon for the dissimilar dye concentrations, or keep the dye concentration abiding and vary the amount of activated carbon instead.
• Y'all may want to find out how h2o cleanup is dependent on the contact time. Design an experiment in which you investigate the dependence of contact fourth dimension on the filtration efficiency. Do a time series with different contact times for your h2o samples and activated carbon. Y'all tin can also change the dye concentration in your water sample for these experiments if necessary.
• Tin the activated carbon you used for your experiment be re-used for another water sample? Subsequently how many filtration steps did you reach the adsorption chapters of the carbon? Does it depend on the dye concentration of your water sample? Design an experiment to observe out!
• What else can be filtered with activated carbon? Practice other food colors give you the aforementioned results? Try separating other mixtures with your carbon filter such equally a sand/soil and water mixture, or a mixture of oil and water. What most removing smells from your h2o sample, do yous think you can filter out a vanilla or peppermint olfactory property?
• Too contact time and particle size, what other parameters tin can influence the filtration efficiency of your water filter? Do you think the temperature of the water sample makes a deviation? What virtually the pH of your h2o sample? Test your hypotheses past varying these parameters and see how clean your h2o gets each time!
• If you are interested in the environmental aspect of water filtration or using more different filtration materials, check out the Scientific discipline Buddies scientific discipline project From Contaminated to Clean: How Filtering Can Make clean Water.

Careers

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When you retrieve nearly a city that is a great place to live, what practise you consider? Probably a community where the citizens are happy, healthy, and comfortable. Role of beingness all three is having a make clean, safety, and constant water supply. Many of us take for granted that when we turn the faucet on we will be able to go a glass of water or that when we flush the toilet our waste product will be carried abroad and treated somewhere. Well, that is what a h2o or wastewater engineer does. Their job is to design… Read more

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Lohner, Svenja. "Which Filtration Cloth Leads to the Best Drinking Water?" Scientific discipline Buddies, 3 Mar. 2022, https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Chem_p108/chemical science/which-filtration-material-leads-to-the-all-time-drinking-water. Accessed sixteen Apr. 2022.

APA Mode

Lohner, Southward. (2022, March 3). Which Filtration Material Leads to the Best Drinking Water? Retrieved from https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Chem_p108/chemistry/which-filtration-material-leads-to-the-all-time-drinking-water

Terminal edit engagement: 2022-03-03

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