Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi

I need your guys' comment about my topic.

I saw article about contaminated water which kills many africans.

so I was thinking about making contaminated water to clean by using microorganisms.

I'm thinking about putting microorganisms in pill shape so it can be dissolved in the contaminated water.

Putting microorganisms in solid pill will be the hardest part i guess though i'm not sure about this.

If i make this successfully, i guess this won't be so expensive so we can give to Africans.

How do you guys think about my topic?

Hi kyhekm,
I see you have identified a very important and interesting topic. There has been an enormous amount of work already done on the topic of "drinking water treatment". Try a search for that term in your favorite search engine and you will find many relevant web sites.
Before you can plan specific details of how you would treat water, you need to identify a specific contaminant of interest. Different contaminants require different types of treatment.
Good luck. I look forward to hearing more about your project.
Chris

Hi
Thanks for your reply.
I know lots of works are done about contaminated water but they mostly require lots of money or high technique.
What I'm trying to make is really cheap and simple technique so it can be used anywhere.
The most problem is that I can't figure out the contaminants yet.
For example, i heard that there are parasites, bacterias, microorganisms etc in contaminated water and it is hard to kill them all and make clean water.
I think I need to figure out this.

And I have a question about making microorganisms in pill shape. Microorganisms are living ones and pill is solid and dead one(in some way).
Do you think there is anyway to put microorganisms in solid pill? It's like containing living things in non-living things. I think microorganisms will die if i contain them in pill.

Thanks for your reply again.

Hi Kyhekm,
People have already developed a variety of cheap filters for use in Africa. If you would like to read more about these, try a web search for "water filter africa" and you'll find links like these:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4967452.stm
http://www.handpump.org/kisii/
http://www.samaritanspurse.ca/ourwork/w ... Kenya.aspx

It's unclear to me how you could clean water by adding a tablet of microorganisms. Certain microbes will convert certain contaminants to less harmful forms (and sometimes more harmful forms), but I am not aware of any microbe or group of microbes that could be used to purify water that might contain a wide range of pathogens.

Chris