Pressurizing the Pump

Pressurizing the Pump

Riley Nelson

When the filter arrived yesterday I was presented with a problem.  The filter works great in its function of getting out the dirt and other contaminents out of the water, but it is very slow.  I needed to figure out some way to pressurize the system in order to maximize the efficiency of the filter.  From the beginning, I knew I wanted it to be all man powered (some sort of hand or foot pump) and not an electronic air pump.  I also wanted to pump to be "user friendly," so they could continue cooking, for example, while still pumping the water.  The only thing that fit this criteria, in my mind, was a foot pump.  Unfortunately, it was the second to last day in the studio and all I had accessible to me was a bike pump. This turned out to work pretty well.  I would not want to have a bike pump in the final prototype because using the bike pump uses your whole body, and takes a lot of work for only a little bit of water.  However, for the purposes of this experiment it worked wonders.  The only problem was that lid to the top bucket kept leaking.  When I took it off I saw the air pressure had actually warped the plastic, and I now was not able to put the lid on the bucket with its original seal.    I also noticed that the water filters a lot faster when there aren't big clumps of dirt or mud (not surprising).  When pressurizing the system with relatively clean water on top, there was a steady stream of water coming out the bottom.  WIth the dirty water, there were two drips of water a second.  I think adding more pressure would continue to increase the efficiency of the system.  Maybe in the next prototype I use a metal bucket and lid in hopes of completely sealing the lid.