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For the past semester, I have been working on the Dissolved Air Floation of Flocs team. Originally, I was involved with the Aeration subteam; however, with the dissolution of that group (due to the conclusion that the method was ineffective) I have joined the Sand Filter team. Currently, the bulk of my work involves experimenting with dissolved oxygen removal from super saturated water by running supersaturated water through a back washed sand filter. The results from our experiments thus far have suggested that this method may not be a very suitable solution to the floating flocs problem. Thus far, it seems that the method can effectively remove the excess DO in the water. While the method seems very promising, some problems have arisen. One problem is that the glass beads we are using are so small that they are being carried away by the bubbles. Because of this, we plan to experiment with different grain sizes of sand in order to minimize sand loss and to observe the effect of sand size on bubble formation. Haley and I spoke with Professor Stewart in the Geotechnical department and obtained a mix of soils. We then sieved the soil out, obtaining a fairly good distribution of sizes that are currently being tested.
My wiki work My other accomplishments this semester include drafting up an AutoCAD diagram of the aeration experimental setup that can be found in the Floating Floc Team's Detailed Task List. I've also made the flow diagram diagrams and other diagrams for the aeration method and helped to reformat the Floating Floc main page.
While the experimental setup was being constructed, I also performed literature searches in order to find relevant information regarding factors facilitating bubble formation in supersaturated water. The articles I have found are:
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