Advice to Future Teams
A Guide For New Members
Welcome to the Pilot Plant! The Pilot Plant is located at Cornell University's Water Filtration Plant (map). The pilot plant is a great resource for doing real-world testing of AguaClara theoretical research.
Advice for Individuals
The first thing to do as a member of the Pilot Plant team is to familiarize yourself with several things: first and foremost, the physical plant, running the plant, Process Controller, the program used to control the variables of the plant (such as flow rate, dosing, etc.) that also logs the results of running the plant, and the Wiki for the Pilot Plant team. All of the above information is on this wiki.
Advice for the Team
There is a great deal of work involved in carrying out successful research projects. One way to reduce this burden is to specialize. At the minimum, the team should have:
- a team leader to co-ordinate things
- a wiki specialist (who have read through the wiki carefully to avoid re-inventing the wheel and also knows how to organize the information you are putting on the wiki)
- a Process Controller person (process controller is a somewhat complicated program and getting it to run an experiment is not trivial)
- other specialists may be necessary depending on the nature of the research project
Research Challenges
see Pilot Plant Fall 2009 Challenges
The Water Filtration Plant Staff
These people are a great resource for advice on how to run a water plant and how to get equipment working. They should also be notified of what the pilot plant is doing (and when) so that they can keep the Cornell University Water Filtration Plant running properly (pilot plant effluent goes back into their influent). The two people that are most familiar with the pilot plant are:
Christopher Bordlemay (Plant Manager)
Thomas Rapalee (Senior Mechanic)
Former Team Members
Former members can be a good source of information on past research and insight into problems with the plant. They may sometimes be persuaded to demonstrate how to run the plant.
Spring 2009 Team:
Jeffrey Allan Katz (team leader)
Monica Hill
Michael Liu
Lalo Lopez
Rustom Meyer
Art Shull