Recycle Home Toilet Water
Wastewater treatment plants help municipalities treat sewage. Can we engineer a system that treats water closer to homes?Copyright 2010 eutrophication&hypoxia, (CC BY 2.0), Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/48722974@N07/4515205247
Fresh water is a limited and valuable natural resource, and engineers play a key role in designing systems that provide fresh water to everyone. In this activity, students learn about water conservation and how water is cycled naturally on Earth and through the wastewater management system. Using parts of the engineering design process, students design a system that allows blackwater to be recycled at the place of use (for example, near a toilet or home as opposed to at a wastewater treatment plant. Students then explain how this recycled water could then be reused as effluent toilet water.
By applying principles of engineering design, engineers look for ways to solve societal problems, improve lives or improve products. Engineers look at a natural or human-made phenomena and see if there is room to improve upon or create systems that make lives better. There is always a tangible objective and outcome that engineers attempt to reach. In this activity, students design a model that allows for recycling of blackwater.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Sketch and design a homemade blackwater recycling device that allows recycled water to be reused as toilet water.
- Build a model that represents a homemade blackwater cleaning device.
- Explain how their model works to their fellow peers through the various processes of cleaning at the macro scale and possibly nanoscale.