science for change

Traditional Sweage Treatment Steps In NYC

-First the waste water gets taken away when you flush the toilet that water gets taken into a pipe to be taken away and taken to a sewage treatment center -Then they must take it through screening to make sure all large objects are out because they might damage the equipment. Often times people put things down the drain that aren't supposed to be put down there. 55,000 blockages happen a year resulting in flooding of homes and even gardes and other things -Next they have to separate the waste from the wastewater to do this they put these into settling tanks and the water floats to the bottom, then robotic arms come in and push it in the center to get sucked down and away, now separated from the waste and wastewater the next step can begin -Visual waste may have been taken away but still very dangerous bacteria are living in the wastewater and must be treated for, they put the water in rectangular boxes called aeration lanes and pumps oxygen into the tanks so that the good bacteria eat away at all of the bad germs -Final treatment is passed through a settlement tank all good bacteria sink to the bottom and can be reused for the secondary treatment stage Sludge collected at the start is treated and reused, can be used for head and power and even gas to power things

How Forest filters work

A lot of the water in the US is originally filtered in the forest. Roots and other things keep soil out of the water which allows it to filter through various layers of soil before it becomes ground water. When this is happening, nutrients, toxins, sediment and more can be filtered. Bacteria in wet forests soils convent nitrates (a nutrient that is harmful) into nitrogen gas, and instead of releasing it into nearby streams, it is released into the air which is good for the water. Forests help get some of the bigger bacterias out.

Reverse Osmosis

Another kind of filter system is a reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis means forcing contaminated water through a membrane (effectively, a very fine filter) at pressure, so the water passes through but the contaminants remain behind. For this filter, you take contaminated water and force it through a membrane to make pure water.

Distillation

Distillation is an easy way to filter water because all you need to do is boil it. It kills off some bacteria, but it doesn't kill limescale, chemicals, and other contaminates.

Chemical Composition of sewage

It is a water-carried waste (stormwater runoff and other water sources that go into the sewer) It is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition, chemical and toxic constituents (toxic stuff in the water) Consists of mostly greywater (from skins, tubs, showers, dishwashers, and clothes washers), blackwater (water used to flush toilets, human waste), soaps and detergents, and toilet paper.. It is likely to carry pathogenic organisms (fungus, virus, bacterium, prion) that can transmit diseases to humans and animals. It may or may not have surface runoff - depending on the design of sewer system All sewage goes back from where it came - it's source

Elements that need to be removed in water to be drinkable

PRETREATMENT Things like branches, leaves, tree limbs, and other large objects. Other things like cans, rags, sticks, plastic packe ts, (any large objects) etc. are removed when passing through a bar screen. Solids are collected and later disposed on a landfill or incinerated. If gross solids are not removed, they become entrained in pipes and moving parts of the treatment plant, and can cause substantial damage and inefficiency in the process. GRIT, SAND, ETC. The velocity of the incoming sewage is adjusted to allow the settlement of sand, grit, stones, and broken glass. These particles are removed because they may damage pumps or other equipment. Grit chambers aren't necessary for small sanitary sewer systems, but they are in large ones. There are 3 types of grit chambers: Horizontal grit chambers, aerated grit chambers, and vortex grit chambers. This process is called sedimentation. FAT AND GREASE In a few larger plans, fat, and grease are removed. Fat and grease in froth forms are also removed. SLUDGE, OILS, AND GREASE Grease and oils are scraped from top and sludge sinks to bottom and is collected and moved elsewhere. Sometimes grease and oil can be recovered to make soap. SECONDARY TREATMENT Biological content is removed. Things like soaps, waste, food waste, and detergent.

Solar Disinfection

Solar Disinfection is a water filtration process, it uses the UV rays from the sun to kill all of the germs and viruses in the water. It uses a PET water bottle (the normal water bottle) and all you need to do is fill the water bottle ⅔ with water than leave it in the sun for 6+ hours. Than the water will be completely filtered and drinkable. This type of filtering requires good weather conditions meaning that if it is any weather other than a sunny day or partly cloudy this will not work. Sodis is already Internationally recognized as a credible way to clean water

Layer filter

The bottle/layer is a filter that could be homemade. It is composed of three separate layers of gravel, sand, and activated charcoal. Actually, a bio-filter works almost the same way that a sewage treatment plant does. A bottle filter uses a multiple stage approach to removing dirt and germs from the water, so that the water that remains is most likely drinkable. Sand, Charcoal and gravel is able to filter water because each of these layers removes different things. That later leaves the water that comes out of the layers/bottle enough to drink safely, even if you got that water from an ugly looking pond near your home. So when you combine them all, they help get rid of most/all of the bad things in the water. The first layer, gravel, is there to remove large pieces of debris from the water. The water then moves onto the sand layer, which removes smaller particulate matter that managed to pass through the gravel. Finally, the water passes through a layer of activated charcoal to remove bacteria, and some chemicals (chlorine based and more). That is how the bottle filter works and how it filters water to make it cleaner.

Hydrolic Cycle

The hydrologic cycle is when water evaporates from the surface of the ocean. The moist air is lifted and cools. The water vapor condenses to make clouds and then the moisture moves all over the earth until it comes back to the surface as precipitation.

carbon granule

The most common household filter system is an activated carbon granule. It is based on charcoal. Charcoal is great for removing many common impurities (including chlorine-based chemicals and more). This filter can't cope with "hardness" (limescale), heavy metals (unless a special type of activated carbon filter is used), and more.

Ion exchange

There is also an Ion exchange filter. It removes limescale and is designed to split apart atoms that are contaminated to make ions. Ions is an electrically charged atom with too many electrons. In this filter, there are zeolite beads and they have sodium Ions in them. This is attracted to calcium and magnesium in the dirty substance and then traps the magnesium and calcium. Now that it trapped the magnesium and calcium, it takes them and then replaces them with it's own sodium ions. That makes the water more soft.

Fruit peels

Various fruits can also filter water, for example, the Banana peel. The banana peel has nitrogen, sulfur, and various acids that aren't harmful to us, but kill bacteria. Because of this, tech experts agree that we just need to make the machine and it will be possible. If you were to pour water through a banana peel it would kill the germs and heavy contaminants in it. Also apple peels could work! According to a test done by a scientist named Mallampati it may be possible to filter using apple and tomato peels. Those peels act as natural sponges for heavy contaminants such as iron and natural contaminants such as pesticides, however we did not test this.