Water filtration lab 10/4/14

The lab is part of a study in how to recycle grey water.  The first few experiments dealt with filtration through sand.  The results there were clear water, with a yellow tint from the charcoal filtering.  Less than what I would have liked, but something.

I have now moved on to the other half of a proposed apparatus.  This part involves using the humidifier/condenser apparatus that I've been experimenting with lately.  Today, I've run 2 tests on the device, but with results hardly any different from the one test I ran last week.  In other words, the experiment has not improved performance much at all.

The last run lost about 3 ounces of water.  Slightly better than before, but the collection methods may have accounted for that.  The breakdown is 13 ounces recovered in all, in which about 9 were unused and still in the humidifier, and about 4 were collected in that device.

The collection device is a plastic container, which is about 10 gallons in size.  It has a somewhat loose fitting lid, in which a certain amount of mist came out of during the runs.  A hose from the vacuum cleaner fit into a cut area on the top of the lid.  The other end of the hose fit on top of an Ozarka water bottle combined with a Dr. Pepper 2 liter bottle which fit together snugly so as to prevent leakage.  Further blocking of leakage was attempted with duct tape fitted all around areas that might seep vapors.  These worked fairly well, as most of the condensation took place in the Ozarka bottle and the plastic collection container.

There were was some leakage which was captured by some aluminum foil.

This last run, I added several cold "bricks", which are normally used in order to keep lunches cold.  This extra coldness inside of the plastic container made little difference in the performance.  This was not expected.

It made no difference how many bricks were added nor what kind of materials used.  It may be better to use the bricks inside of a metal container, however.  A "coozie" does not seem work at all.  The coozie that I used absorbed the moisture and left hardly nothing to be collected.

Perhaps one more run might be attempted.  This time, liberally use the aluminum foil inside of the container.  Put all cold objects inside of metal containers.  I'm guessing that metal works better because it is a better conductor of heat.  As the metal foil was hot last week, I'm guessing that the cold objects may help keep them cool and that will aid in condensation.

Update:

I did another run with the same results.  I didn't use aluminum as mentioned above.  I think the results are actually quite good, as far as condensation goes.  The water is going into areas in which it can be collected.  It only appears that I'm losing a lot because it is a large proportion of the water being used.  A full run would use up all the water that the unit can handle before being refilled.  I think it will hold nearly a half gallon of water, or about 2 liters.  I'm using about a fourth and the machine is only using about half of that.  It can run a lot longer than what I'm attempting on each trip.  After running for about 8 hours, or until empty, then check it out for performance.  I'm thinking that a larger proportion of the water can be collected.