Clay Filtration of Microbes and Fluoride

Abstract

Consumption of contaminated water may result in several water-borne diseases, including hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, dysentery and other diseases that cause diarrhoea. One of the ways this problem can be prevented is by the use of household water treatment and safe storage. As a result of this, the ceramic water filter, which is one of the effective water treatment techniques, was studied and evaluated to provide information that, will help improve their performance and promote their use. In this project, two kinds of ceramic filters were fabricated; one without hydroxylapatite and the other with hydroxylapatite. Their flow rates were determined and their ability to remove E.coli was also tested. The ability to scale up these filters to achieve a system that will provide large volumes of water per filtration was also explored in this project. The results showed that, the two kinds of filters did not indicate significant difference in their flow rates and the E.coli removal of the filters proved successful. It was also realized for the scale up that, it is possible to connect the ceramic filters to produce a system that can produce large volumes of filtered water. However, the effectiveness of the system depends largely on the individual flow rate of the filters used.