CANTERBURY
STUDENT DESIGNS 3D-PRINTED WATER FILTER TO SAVE LIVES
A University of Canterbury student is
developing 3D-printed water filters
with potential to improve water
quality in developing countries.
Get In Control
- Reliable movement for your water application
LINAK® electric actuators are easily mounted on a wide range of
slide gates, sluice/penstock gates and knife gates. Our bracket is
specially designed for easy installation using universal ISO flanges
F07 and F10. LINAK actuators are maitenance free, thoroughly
tested and built for harsh environments.
www.engineeringnews.co.nz 27
UC Master of Engineering student
Benjamin Houlton is researching
how filters can be 3D-printed
to remove trace metals from
wastewater streams and other
polluted waterways.
“Further down the track the filters
could be used in developing
countries like Cambodia where there
are high levels of arsenic in river
water,” he says.
His main focus is using computer
simulations of water flowing through
linak.co.nz
Phone: 09 580 2071
REN170
filters to determine the most effective
structure.
The conventional view is that
randomly packed filter structures
have the best performance,
however Benjamin’s supervisors
at UC discovered that with new
technologies this is no longer true.
He says modern 3D-printing
technologies enable the creation of
finer structures, which challenge the
performance of randomly ordered
models of filter.
With his Master’s degree due for
completion next year, the race is on
to understand and identify the most
beneficial filter structure using flow
modelling simulations,
and validate the models
against experimental data
supplied by collaboration
research partners.
“The benefits of 3D-printing mean
we can simulate and predict the
different flow characteristics before
the filters are made. It also means
we can recreate the same filter over
and over.”
Removing metal traces from
waste-water is just one application,
Benjamin says. If it is successful
it might change a whole range of
packed-bed technologies.
Scion in Rotorua, which initiated the
project in collaboration with an
industrial partner, will experimentally
test the effectiveness of the new
solid filter designs.
Benjamin won the Biomolecular
Interaction Centre scholarship to
pursue his Master’s degree at UC
and also received a prestigious
William Georgetti scholarship which
he will use to complete a doctorate
overseas once his Master’s is
complete, enabling him to pursue his
research passions.
/www.engineeringnews.co.nz
