top of page

FOLIA WATER GARRAFUN

Folia Water is a start up that has developed a paper water filtering system that costs just under $1. Their current system features a cone-shaped filter in a plastic housing that allows users to filter water from 2-liter soda bottles into any container. However, Folia Water identified the need for larger amounts of water to be filtered with their filter, and through our class, D-Lab Design, we were matched with Folia Water to help them create a product to accomplish this goal.

 

We specifically focused on Mexico where Folia Water had identified that one of the most common water containers people owned were 20-liter garrafon jugs. We, therefore, designed a filter to fit specifically to these jugs, with the goal of being able to sell it to Mexican consumers who make $2-$10 a day. Our goals with the project were to make an extremely cheap product that also had an appealing design so that the filter would be attractive as a consumer product.

Our design features three parts: A reusable cap to attach the filter to the garrafon, an inner cylinder to provide structural support for the filter, and a cylindrical pleated filter. To keep the costs to a minimum, both the cap and inner cylinder are reusable, while the filter is the only part of the product that is disposable.

 

I mainly focused on the design of the filter itself. I machined the aluminum molds for the end caps of the filter. The filter has an interference fit with the cap to form a water-tight seal so that the water can only go through the filter; this allows the cap to be reusable since a permanent seal does not have to be made. The filter was pleated to increase the filtering surface area, which increases the filtering capacity for the filter and the flow rate out of the filter.

 

My Contribution

This was a class project with a team of four people. We did not have assigned roles and all split the work for the project evenly.

bottom of page