A high school student from Virginia has designed a water filter that removes nearly 96% of microplastics from drinking water — without using a filter membrane at all.
Mia Heller, from Warrenton, Virginia, got the idea after reading about microplastic and PFAS contamination in local water and watching her mother constantly replace expensive membranes in the family's home filtration system. She wondered whether plastic particles could be pulled out of water a different way.
Her… See more
A high school student from Virginia has designed a water filter that removes nearly 96% of microplastics from drinking water — without using a filter membrane at all.
Mia Heller, from Warrenton, Virginia, got the idea after reading about microplastic and PFAS contamination in local water and watching her mother constantly replace expensive membranes in the family's home filtration system. She wondered whether plastic particles could be pulled out of water a different way.
Her answer was ferrofluid — an oily liquid packed with tiny magnetic particles. When it is mixed into water, microplastics stick to the oil. A magnet then pulls the ferrofluid, along with the captured plastic, back out of the water. In her tests, the system removed about 96% of microplastics, and roughly 87% of the ferrofluid could be recovered and reused.
Her compact prototype, about the size of a bag of flour, earned a special award at the 2025 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.
Important context: this is a student prototype tested in the lab, not a product you can buy. It would need more testing for safety, scale and long-term performance before it could be used in homes or treatment plants.
Still, it's a brilliant example of how a curious teenager with a simple idea can take on one of the planet's biggest pollution problems.
#Science #Microplastics #CleanWater #Engineering #YoungInventors See less
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