...
This summer the plate settler team will work on generating a controlled ideal experiment as a basis for understanding the robustness of the plate settling system. We plan to test how the settlers function under a wide variance of conditions, since changes in alum dosage and influent turbidity inevitably affect the sedimentation process in many ways. Keeping in mind that the presence of things like natural organic matter in our raw water disturbs floc blanket behavior at a molecular level, we hope to gain some physical insight into how the settling system responds to these fluctuations.
Velocity gradients within the tube settlers have proven to be very important, . and we hope to continue past investigation into the nature of their formation, profiles, and physical consequences relative to our system. Why? Discuss mechanism here by which velocity gradients pull up floc particles. Since it is likely that the density of our floc particles strongly depends on variable external parameters (like alum dosage and influent turbidity), our direction is highly geared towards a fluid dynamics anlysis.