9/2020: Water Resource Management: The King Rama 9’s Way

 A project is to design a water filter system of the scenario that the family lives high in the mountains and has watched the nearby ice glaciers begin to melt at alarming rates due to increases in global temperatures and climate change. Melting glaciers are sending more and more water into the local rivers, causing flooding and increased sediment and pollution into the water sources. This family seems to have too much water and sandy.

The first thing that came to mind was that The Live Check Dam Royal Project of His Majesty King Rama 9. King Rama IX's Check Dam uses local wisdom with easy to find local materials. The materials are bamboo, sand, rope, and bayan tree. The Dam can be built in any kind of waterways and it helps nature, animal-like fish, and humans near it. The Dam can keep water for the entire year. The characteristic of the bayan tree in which its roots spread underground till the water source helps to strengthen the dam in the future when bamboo structures are worn-out. It would be planted in each corner of the dam.

Hypothesis: Can the family on the mountain slow down water and utilize the polluted water by applying the step dam filter system?

• The Independent variable for the project is to use the water from different mountain sources. The water sources mostly come from ice on the mountains that are molten down. I will use rained water or city water mixed with sand to represent the water from the mountain. It is the independent variable for the experiment.

• The dependent variable for the project is the quality of water after passing the test set. The water will be collected from the designed test set, and then to boil the water at 100C. The water temperature should be near 100 C and no or minimum sediment.

• The controlled variable for this experiment is the volume of water, the same temperature, boiling tubes, and the same type of thermometer.

• Filtered water preparation step; The design is to use the DIY step dam, which is inspired by the check dam of King Rama IX. The first step is to use rock/stone to trap big particles as a first cleaning. The second step is to use sand as a second filter to trap the smaller particles and sand. The third step is to use charcoal to filter the smell, color, and bacteria, and the last step is to filter fine particles with wool, cotton, pandas, or old clean cloth. 

Materials :

1. Acrylic box/ acrylic plate

2. Rock/ stone

3. Sand

4. Charcoal

5. Pandas

6. Popsicle sticks

7. Water (polluted water)

There were three steps based on our experience of the building.

Step 1: prepare all materials. In this step, I have to clean all materials and cut the acrylic for making the mountain slope.

Step 2: Build the test set: At first I want to use popsicle sticks, but it was not strong enough. So I changed to the acrylic wall. I started to fill in the materials.

Step 3: Test the filter: For this step, I used city water with sand and rained water with sand. Due to the small test set, I may need to re-circulate polluted water more than one time to obtain the water as clean as possible. The output is clean and clearer. 

                                                    

Water Quality Testing I will use the filtered water from our DIY step dam set to check the boiling point with a thermometer. The temperature should be at 100C degrees. I will investigate 3 things that are the following.

• The temperature of water by using a Thermometer

• Sediment 

• Bubbles on the surface

• The result 

Polluted water 1 (Rained water + sand)=97C 

Polluted water 2 (City water + sand)=96C 

• Scenario Reflection/1: Plan and Filtered Water Preparation 

• The scenario is placed in the mountain. When the water comes, It comes very fast, so I plan to build the step dam to both slow down and filter the pollution in the waters.

•  I built the DIY step dam set, and the prototype did not work well because the wall of each filter layer was not strong, the water flowed slower, but not in the direction (step by step) as we expected, and the water output was sandy. 

                                      

I tried again to re-engineer the filtered water preparation set to solve the problem of the first version by building a stronger wall of each filter layer, clean raw materials before I fill them in, and better pandas.

Developed version   

 The development of our filter is the changing 

of pandas from the normal to the best one

 that I can find. I also changed material 

from popsicle sticks to acrylic walls for stronger 

walls.

• Scenario Reflection/2: Water Quality Test

•  After I prepared the filtered water, I tested the quality of the water. 

 The result 

Water	Temperature 1 (thermometer)	Temperature 2 (sensor temp)
Water bath	98C	100C
Rained water	96C	97C
City water	81C	96C

The temperature of rained water and city water is not 100% pure. The city water may contain some chemicals, so the temperature is lower than that of rained water.

• Scenario Reflection/3:Conclusion

• The hypothesis is “Can the family on the mountain slow down water and utilize the polluted water by applying the step dam filter system?”

After tested, the model was able to slow down the water and clean it simultaneously. It was also tested the quality of water by heating up water to check whether the water is pure or not. The water was almost 100% pure for the following reasons.

1. During the test, I couldn’t see the sediment below water, so it shows that the filter process is usable.

2. The tested water was also boiled close to 100 C.

3. I found a lot of bubbles during its boiling. 

So, our design is workable for the family on the mountain from the scenario.