Performance of Ceramic Pot Filters with Colloidal Silver for Rural Water Treatment

Deysi Janina Tambo-Sopla, Alberto Franco Cerna-Cueva, César Samuel López-López

Abstract

Household ceramic pot filters are promising for rural water treatment, but their performance depends on ceramic composition, pore-former content, and silver application. This study screened 20 physical filters fabricated from red or brown clay at five clay/sawdust ratios (82.5/17.5 to 72.5/27.5), with or without 300 mL of colloidal silver at 80 mg/L. Each filter treated three successive 3-L batches of the same composite rural water. These represented repeated measurements on a single filter rather than independent filter replicates. T1 (red clay, 17.5% sawdust, with silver) removed 81.13% of turbidity, 83.14% of viable mesophilic count (VMC), and 97.22% of fungi; T6 showed comparable performance. In all four clay-by-silver series, mean removal at 17.5% sawdust was greater than that at 27.5% for all three responses. VMC removal was higher in the presence of silver in all 10 matched formulation pairs (mean difference, 5.94 percentage points; median, 4.08; range, 0.26–17.92), whereas differences in turbidity and fungal removal were inconsistent. Because each treatment contained only one physical filter, these patterns are descriptive and do not estimate reproducible treatment effects. Total and thermotolerant coliforms were each not detected in 18 of the 20 filters under the applied conditions. The recorded direct-material subtotal was PEN 26.8–27.1 for filters with silver and PEN 2.8–3.1 for those without silver. In a separate first-filtrate pilot, silver was below the quantification limit of 0.007 mg/L. The 17.5% sawdust formulations require independent replication and long-term validation.

Keywords

References

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DOI: 10.14416/j.asep.2026.09.011

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