With the ongoing issue of unsafe drinking water in indigenous communities across Canada, the need for a proper filtration and detection method becomes essential. Our goal is to help these communities detect for unwanted pathogens in their water to ensure its safe to drink, as well as provide a point of care water filtration system to then filter out harsh contaminants such as lead, mercury, and E-coli. Our device will aim to serve as a backup water care and detection system to use in indigenous communities when existing filtration solutions aren’t available or working. It will test for four main water-borne pathogens: campylobacter, E-coli, salmonella, and shigella. To achieve this, our solution uses synthetic biology and engineering to create an easy to use yet effective water filtration and detection system.

The very first design we had created for our device wasn’t even close to our final prototype. In fact, the original design was a wasn’t even a kettle, let alone a way to help detect for water borne pathogens.

Our first idea involved creating an on-tap water filtration system which would serve to filter out the same major water contaminants in which we’re still targeting such as E-coli, lead, and more. The initial goal was to use multiple mechanical filtration techniques combined to filter out the water from start to finish. The processes we investigated using were reverse osmosis, activated carbon and charcoal, ion-exchange, and carbon block filtering. We aimed to use a combination of these methods in unison to completely filter out all major health concerning contaminants.

The next idea we had was an attempt to build from the first one. We wanted to keep the same idea of filtering water on-tap, but instead design it with parts that would be guaranteed to kill bacteria, and lighter parts.

The new device would take the second stage filter from the previous idea and replace it with a new filtration method using hollow microfiber tubing. This part of the system would work to kill bacteria from the water completely using multiple minuscule hollow tubes that would block bacteria from passing through.

Knowing that we wanted to create a filtration device that was simple yet novel, we now wanted to really get a sense of what these communities are currently doing to clean their water, as well as what has and hasn’t worked in the past. We also wanted to find a way to incorporate the LAMP PCR reaction portion of the project with the filtration side so that the two could make sense together.

Currently, the most common way that many communities clean their water is sadly by boiling it. Many indigenous communities have been issued drinking water advisories, some of which have been ongoing for over 10 years, forcing them to boil their water before consumption to help kill as much bacteria as possible. Knowing that they would be familiar with the process of boiling water, we thought why not keep it simple and incorporate the idea of boiling water as a part of our new filtration system.

This new idea was to develop a water bottle with a heating plate that the bottle could sit on to boil the contents inside. This we knew would for sure kill all the bacteria in the water if the temperature was held at 100 degrees Celsius for at least 5 minutes or so. The only issue then was with other contaminants such as lead since boiling water wouldn’t remove them but simply amplify them making it more saturated. We added the idea of an ion-exchange filter that would sit on top of the lid of the bottle and filter out these other contaminants before the boiling process happens, that way the entire process from start to finish would remove all the most dangerous contaminants we needed to target. Further, the LAMP PCR reaction that we worked on needed to be held at roughly 65 degrees, so we added a feature to the bottle that would be able to hold the lamp reaction on top of the bottle as its boiling water, allowing the rising steam to heat the reaction accordingly.

With the problems mentioned in the previous iteration of our design, we set out to try and create a practical use for our filtration device. To help shed some more light on what its actually like for indigenous residents who have water quality issues, we spoke to the Chief of the indigenous community known as Tyendinaga. We gained so much from the meeting, and what we took away from it was mainly that many it’s very difficult to provide a singular method to clean the water completely. Many companies have tried to solve this issue with similar point of care devices, or with large and expensive filtration equipment and still have failed. The fact that the climate, nature, and the environment is always changing makes is so hard to pinpoint one cause for the unsafe water at hand since these factors constantly change the ways these communities get their water.

Keeping this information in mind, we knew that we couldn’t completely fix this issue ourselves, but what we could do was provide an easy way to test for unsafe drinking water, and a last-resort method to help clean most dangerous bacteria and impurities in water. When current filtration methods fall unavailable or ineffective, our device could be used as a backup to help get rid of as many contaminants as possible.

Working from our previous design, we had to adapt it a little in order to properly machine it. The aluminum bottle would now be turned into an aluminum cup about 7 inches tall, 4.5 inches in diameter, 3.35mm in wall thickness, and roughly 6mm thick at the bottom. The total volume of the cup would hold 1.7L of liquid, and the entire device could boil water to 100 degrees Celsius in roughly 16 minutes. The filter would use the same ion-exchange process, but the size of the filter would increase due to the size of the aluminum cup. Lastly, the lid used while the water is boiling now would house a temperature sensor on the inside to ensure the LAMP reaction was maintained at a steady 65 degrees Celsius.

Due to the large size of the aluminum cup, we decided to change the idea from a water bottle to a kettle device, and the system would now be marketed as a kettle with a filtration unit.

When we began the project, our main goal was to test for water pathogens as well as produce a point of care device that could filter out these pathogens as well as other harmful contaminants in indigenous water sources. After looking into existing solutions and consulting with indigenous communities, we realised it was very difficult to create a device which could purify water from any source consistently over time, seeing as the causation for unsafe water was constantly changing with the environment and nature. Knowing this, we shifted our goal of designing a water filtration system that would replace any existing ones in indigenous communities, to creating a last-resort detection and filtration system that could be implemented when other water cleaning methods fail. We realised we couldn’t simply produce something that would solve this problem with a handheld device, so we strived to develop a design that would give indigenous communities the best chance at clean water when their current filtration systems stop working or become outdated over time.

The on-tap water filter would originally would have consisted of three major parts connected.

This new system would remain the same up until the last stage of filtration, meaning the faucet ring and the first stage water filter wouldn’t change at all. The second part of the filter would now take tens of small hollow tubing, about 1 micron in diameter and place them together inside a small plastic unit. This type of filtration works by preventing anything bigger than 1 micron in size getting through the tubing. For example, E. Coli ranges from 1 to 2 microns in length, which when faced with this sized tubing would get caught on entry and therefore removed from the water source.

The water bottle would work as follows. The first part would encompass the filtration of the water. A filter would rest on the top of the bottle that would clean the heavy metals and other contaminants from the water as it enters the bottle before the boiling stage. Once this part is complete, the filter would then be removed and replaced with a lid with two small holes in the middle. The first hole would house the LAMP PCR reaction while the water is boiling to heat the reaction to a steady 65 degrees, while the second hole would allow for a small flow of steam to exit as the water begins to heat up. The last part of the device would involve removing the lid used for boiling the water, and replacing it with a screw-on cap for drinking when the user desires.

Similar to the water bottle, the kettle would work in three stages. First, the filtration unit would be placed on top of the kettle and the user would pour water into the filter which would remove any heavy metals and such. Next, the filter would be removed, and the lid which houses the LAMP PCR reaction would be placed on top instead. The heating pad is then switched on, and the PCR reaction is inserted into the lid. While the water boils, the reaction will start to heat up and approach it’s required temperature. When this occurs, the temperature sensor will send a signal to a circuit, and a green LED will switch “ON”, telling the user it’s met the required setting. If the reaction falls a few degrees below or above 65, A red LED will switch “ON”, which then means the user should either lift the lid off the kettle and wait for the reaction to cool or turn the heat up to a higher setting. This process should be carried out for at least 30 minutes to let reaction carry out. Afterwards, the lid can be removed and replaced with the pouring lid, which can then be used to transfer the water to another medium to cool.

As per the last iteration, this new system would also be modular. The new filter could be attached to the first stage filter, as well as to the faucet ring if the user wished.

To make sure the outside of the bottle remained at room temperature while the inside got hot, we would make construct the bottle in 2 layers. The inside would be made from a thick vacuum simulated layer of stainless steel (roughly 5-6mm thick), and the outside layer would be from a lower series grade aluminum (1100 preferably) at 3-4mm thick. This way the user would not risk burning themselves while using the bottle at any time. The detachable lids for the bottle would be made from PLA 1.75mm 3D print filament for cost purposes but would still serve as a strong substitute for plastics for the sake of building a simple prototype. The heat plate was intended to be constructed from simple parts found at a hardware store such as nichrome wire, aluminum sheets, copper wire, and more.

The first would be the faucet attachment, consisting of a strong metal ring with a threading on the inside which would screw onto the end of home faucets. To account for different size faucets, we envisioned we’d create thin rubber rings which would fit around the metal ring which would help fill the gap between larger sized faucets.

The second part would contain the first step of the filtration process. This part would house the components necessary to filter out common water contaminants such as lead, mercury, chlorine, manganese, and more using an activated carbon process. It would also have a strong mesh like fabric attached to the top to block heavy amounts of dirt from entering the device. This part would attach to the faucet screw via threading.

The third part would contain a second filtration method to remove bacteria from the water. This would involve using a process like reverse osmosis to remove E. coli and other harmful bacteria for safe consumption. This part would also attach to the second part to tie the three together.

The entire three parts together we’re also designed to be modular, so that both filtration systems could be attached to the faucet ring by themselves if the user wished.

The kettle works in three stages. The first stage consists of the mechanical filtration portion. A detachable ion-exchange water filter is placed on top of the aluminum kettle, where water can then be poured into to remove contaminants such as heavy metals, chlorine, and more before entering the kettle. A full list of all the contaminants the actual filter can remove is listed below.

Although our device was now predicted to weigh less and filter out bacteria at the same time, we still had issues with the design and the concept. The new design still felt like we were simply taking parts from existing technologies and putting them together, and the device didn’t really have a connection to the LAMP PCR pathogen detection side of the project. There was also still a lack of novelty with the device, and more importantly we still we’re somewhat unsure if the device could effectively cleanse the water from bacteria. Further, even if these filtration methods together could work, another issue was simply the cause for dirty water in indigenous communities. Their water comes from many different sources, most of which are constantly changing and evolving with the environment over time. Knowing this, our new device wouldn’t be able to keep up with the ongoing changes present in these communities and it would fall useless in a matter of months potentially. To get around this, we needed to find either find a new way to clean water that would always work 100% of the time independent of the situation or come up with a solution that would resist the constant environmental changes in these communities.

Although this new design was a lot easier to use and used familiar techniques seen in Indigenous communities, we still ran into a few problems. One problem was the cost to produce the two metal layers of the bottle would have been upwards of 1500 dollars, which includes the cost to purchase the materials and to purchase a special part for a CNC machine which was not previously owned at the university’s machine shop. Another problem was the rate at which we could produce clean water with the bottle. The bottle housed roughly 1L of water, but the time it took to filter and boil it would theoretically take 25 minutes due to the tested flow rate of our filter, and the strength of our heating device. The biggest issue again had to do with the cause for the dirty water in these communities, and our device couldn’t keep up with the constant changing environment. For example, as of now our bottle could filter out most of the contaminants present such as E-coli and salmonella, but in the future if different contaminants such as blue green algae became an issue which is very common, our device simply couldn’t keep up. Overall, our bottle was great for cleaning a large group of bacteria and impurities, but it wouldn’t be able to in the future.

The main problem with the device is time it takes to clean the water using the filter in the beginning. Due to the size of the filter, it takes nearly 17 minutes to transfer 1 cup of water to the kettle. This means that it would take about an hour and twenty minutes from start to finish to produce 1L of clean drinking water. Evidently this is way too much time and is something that could be improved by decreasing the size of the water filter. Another issue comes from the boiling portion of the kettle. The user must operate the lid of the kettle to ensure the reaction remains at a constant 65. During this time the user can’t step away from the device and complete other tasks which is a large waste of time. This could be solved in two ways by either adjusting the heating devices setting to make sure the reaction stays at the required temperature, or by re-designing the device to make the entire process autonomous. Lastly, the aluminum cup we designed is not coated in any Teflon or resistive coating, which allows for some aluminum to slip into the boiled water when the aluminum heats up, which could cause cytotoxic or genotoxic effects. Surely, there is still a lot more room for development and improvement on the kettle’s design.

The problems that came from this design were a few things. Firstly, the design was going to be very heavy when fully put together. We predicated based off other existing filtrations systems similar to ours that the entire device put together would weigh about 5 – 7 pounds. This was extremely heavy compared to similar products. Another problem was our confidence with the filtration system. We knew that it would work to filter out most contaminants we were aiming for, but we were unsure about some of them such as salmonella and giardia. We also knew that these bacteria tend to build up inside of filtration systems which could make eventually cause the user to fall ill. Overall, we we’re not 100% sure it would work, and didn’t want to take a chance.

The last issue was with the novelty of the device. At the end of the day, we were just taking existing filtration methods and putting them together in an attempt to make a filter system that would “hopefully” work. We felt that we could create something more useful, adaptable, and novel at the same time.

Once the water is filtered, the next stage of the process begins. The mechanical filter is then removed and replaced with a second lid which contains the LAMP PCR pathogen detection reaction, as well as a temperature sensor with a small circuit board monitored using a microcontroller. Once this lid is secured, the kettle is placed on a heating plate which begins to boil the water. Once the water reaches a boil and remains there for at least 5 - 10 minutes, the LAMP PCR reaction can then be placed in the middle hole of the lid. For the reaction to successfully carry out, it must remain around 65 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes. During this time, the user needs to tend the reaction to make sure it doesn’t go too far above or below 65 degrees. This is where the temperature sensor comes in. As the reaction heats up, the sensor will detect it’s temperature and when it gets in and around 65, a circuit will light up a green LED letting the user know it’s at the required temperature. If the reaction gets too hot, a red LED will switch on telling the user it needs to cool down. If this happens, lid should be removed using the handle for a few seconds until the green Led comes back on, which is when the lid can then be placed back on. During this process, the user should switch the heating plate’s setting higher or lower depending on how hot the reaction is getting. For example, if the LED is constantly switching from green to red, a good way to fix this would be to slowly turn down the heat applied to the kettle by lowering the heart plate’s setting until it reaches a steady green reading. This process should again be carried out for 30 minutes to let the reaction complete.

The last stage of the filtration process is the easiest. The user can then remove the lid with the reaction on it, and then insert the smaller lid used for pouring water into different mediums to cool off.

The kettle system removes common water contaminants as well as bacteria. Although we wanted to create our own mechanical filter, we couldn’t simply due to time and resources, which led us to purchase a Zero Water 5 Stage filter to use for our design. The filter we wanted to create would use the same materials and process, so we decided to use a pre-designed filter for the sake of building a working prototype. The filter uses and ion-exchange method, a reversible chemical reaction where an ion (a charged particle) from a solution is exchanged for similar ion attached to a solid particle. Inside the filter, this process would mean taking unwanted ions in drinking water such as charged uranium or arsenic, and simply replacing them with other ions which aren’t as harmful. The mechanical filter removes at least 95% to 99% of the following list of contaminants below.

When the water is boiled, it heat kills almost all bacteria but does not sterilize the water, which makes it a form of pasteurization and not sterilization. Pasteurization is known a process where heating certain foods for a short time kills bacteria which otherwise could make someone fall ill. A list of some of the most common bacteria that pasteurization eliminates using our kettle can be found below.

To learn about our complete design process for the kettle, click on the different iterations below or at the top of the page!