Water Purification in Thailand

Water is a necessary part of life, but without proper filtration, it could cause problems such as illness or death. While citizens of developed countries may take the water that flows from their taps for granted, many parts of the world do not have access to clean water. A small village in Thailand called Nong Bua is one such community that is hindered by the quality of their water supply. Nong Bua has a water filtration and distribution system, but this treatment process is doing more harm than good. The drinking water in Nong Bua is contaminated with a myriad of harmful substances including coliform bacteria, manganese, and iron. With these problems in mind, our group used creative engineering in order to build a water filtration system for Nong Bua. While we could not acquire water from Nong Bua for testing, we used water from the local Raritan River instead. The tests that we conducted on this water found bacteria as a contaminant. The system we built to address these problems is made up of a system of filters and chlorinators used to kill bacteria in the water. The water will be pumped through a sand filter, which is used to trap small particles and remaining bacteria. The water also goes through a mechanical particle filtration system. Finally, the water passes through an activated carbon filter that will remove large heavy metal particles, and remove the unpleasant taste of chlorine that deterred the Thai people from drinking the water. Our filter worked in removing contaminants from the Raritan River water. To improve our design, we could add lids to each component of the system to ensure that no external sources could pollute it further. We could also improve the quality of the caulking on our particle separator to make it more stable against higher water pressures.