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As a team, we worked in MathCAD to calculate the distance that the jets of water coming into the LFOM would travel inside the LFOM. If we discover that a bucket inserted into the LFOM below the orifices can catch the jets before they hit the water, the bucket theory will be a viable option. We determined that all but the top three jets of water would in fact hit the far wall of the LFOM before reaching any sort of size bucket that we could place in the LFOM. This eliminated both the teacup theory and the variation on that theory as possible solutions. The MathCAD file is attached. (what was the purpose of doing this?)
After narrowing down to the "pipe within a pipe" and vertical/incline plane designs to test in a lab settingeliminating both bucket theories, we decided that testing these the last two designs in a lab would not be difficult and would give more realistic, tangible results than our calculations.
Testing and Results
We used the pilot plant to test our retrofit design in an environment that replicated the actual plants as closely as possible. The first design we tested was the vertical/inclined plane. We used a 5cm-wide, 60cm-long steel plate to test the effectiveness of this plan to reduce water aeration. Unfortunately, we determined visually that there was very little, if any, change in the amount of bubbles formed before and after inserting the steel plate into the LFOM. Even at various angles of inclination, the amount of bubbles formed was the same. (can you show any visual confirmation of this with pictures for both or either case?)
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