...
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 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. 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 testedinvolved aiding in the assembling process and expansion of both setups. Post construction, my focus was mostly helping the team run experiments concerning gas removal from supersaturated water with both the aeration and the sand filter setup. When it was necessary to obtain a range of sand grain sizes for the sand filter, Haley and I spoke to Professor Stewart in the Geotechnical Department and I subsequently aided in sieving out a range of sizes. After data collection from both setups, I aided other team members with data analysis.
My wiki work 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 flow diagrams and other diagrams for the aeration method and helped to reformat the Floating Floc main page and most of the Aeration Method pages.
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:
...