The clean water crisis in the Caribbean Islands can be attributed to the unpredictable natural disasters that occur every year. These natural disasters can contaminate freshwater sources and damage water infrastructure. This proposal combines human power, in the form of pedaling, and reverse osmosis for purifying seawater in the Caribbean Sea after natural disasters. A prototype was built and tested to analyze the feasibility of this design. The final results demonstrated that the functioning prototype was able to filter diluted seawater, however the design was not fully sustainable in terms of efficiently using human power. To accommodate a family of five, the device was able to produce 0.76 gallons of clean drinking water per hour. Future considerations were suggested for producing water at a faster rate with less human effort.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Yeaton, Kai H.
• Siddiqui, Hajera H.
• Sanchez, Marisol
• Doan, Minh-Chau D.

Subject

• Sustainability
• Project-Based Learning
• Environment
• Water
• Energy

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• E-project-040621-141612
• 17186

Advisor

• Levey, Fiona

Year

• 2021

UN Sustainable Development Goals

• 3 - Good Health and Well-being
• 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation
• 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy

Date created

• 2021-04-06

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Mechanical Engineering

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Last modified

• 2021-05-03