"Young Jin"'s Individual Contribution Page

Fall 2010 Semester Contributions

For now, our team has not been able to progress significantly with our experiments due to errors in the apparatus. With the team, I have helped in finding out why errors appeared in our results, fixing the settling column, the pressure sensor experiments, and cleaning the apparatus. I have helped writing the reflection reports and updating the documents that are to help future members.

Spring 2010 Final-Semester Contributions

Continuing the work from the semester of fall 09, this semester I returned to the Tube Floc team and researched the effects of varying alum dosage and flocculator length. With Sophie, I was again put into the data analysis group of the team.

This semester, the team decided to collect as much data on flocculator length and alum dosage as possible with an assurance of accuracy of these results. We planned to replicate the experiments conducted the previous semester for verification and organized the order in which we should increase the influent turbidity and flocculator length. The Mathcad code for Data Processor was upgraded and a new excel spreadsheet was created for organization/storage of the overall results.

Unfortunately, this semester, unpredicted and unavoidable problems were encountered in the experimental apparatus. With goals set up and experiments planned out, the team was hoping for a smooth run of various experiments and much data acquisition; however, unexpected events such as computers shutting down, the water bucket falling, water leakage, etc prevented the experiments from running and gave poor results. Most importantly, the experimental group of the team discovered alum clogging in the influent tube which affected the whole experiment and gave false results that could not be used for analysis. Because of these situations, there were not much data to analyze this semester and not much new results were collected.

I specifically was in charge of updating the Wiki so that we would not have to cram in for the final draft. I tried to learn from Sophie the data analysis process as much as possible for the data collected. In addition to the experiment of alum dosage and flocculator length, the team was also given the task to test the validity of the results given by FReTA. I was assigned to analyze this new experiment as much as possible and was put in charge of calculating the amount, size, and theoretical sedimentation velocities of the particle beads we were to order for the experiment. I wrote up the Wiki page on this section (Test suspension) and edited the overall page with final organizational touches.

Fall 2009 Final-Semester Contributions

In the beginning of the semester, for organization and efficiency, our team was split into two groups: the data analysis group and experiment group. I was assigned to the data analysis group with Sophie and Laura.

Before beginning any experiment, the goal for our team was to better acquaint ourselves to the experimental set-up and concepts of the tube flocculator. I read several documents explaining some of the ideas necessary for the experiment, such as Fractal Flocculation Model Part 1 and an MS thesis written by Ian Tse. The thesis was an essential guide for our team since it explained not only the Mathcad code we will be using throughout our experiments, but also the gave the overall goals, ideas, and summary on past experiments for the tube flocculator.

After reading the documents, to get hands-on experience, my group and I decided to replicate a past experiment. From this, we learned how to use Mathcad and got a better understanding of how to analyze data.

After this first task, our team moved on to our first main challenge (see challenge 2 listed). With the experiment group setting up the apparatus and running the experiments, I was assigned to process the data retrieved from each experiment through Mathcad and analyze the overall result. In the beginning, Laura and I narrowed down the alum dosage range based on the information given from the datalog. However, realizing that our approximations and speculations did not have a firm basis, rather than reading the datalogs ourselves, we changed our method of analysis to be based on the graphs from Mathcad. With each alum dosage, the experiment team varied the flocculator length. And with each set of data I processed through Mathcad, I documented patterns, discontinuities, and any particular trends that needed to be noted. With the Mathcad code modified by Sophie, I was also able to find the overall mean residual turbidity which drew a better overall summary of the experiment.

With the results and analysis we've completed so far, our team created the Wiki page. In the mid-term Wiki, I contributed in the Results and Discussion part of experiment 2. And with the final Wiki draft, following comments made on the mid-term Wiki and adding more information we have retrieved from recent experiments, I cleaned up the documents created for recent experiments, edited them, and uploaded them online. I wrote the introduction to the section for analysis of variation of alum dose (see here) and wrote the analysis page with Laura and Sophie. I tried to make final edits to all the pages in the wiki and added intro paragraphs to the pages. And following the additional comments made for the draft, the team gathered and fixed the whole wiki together.
My next plan is to work on the final presentation that will be made on December 12, 2009, and to continue analyzing data from new experiments that will be conducted.

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