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See the retrofit designs page for visuals of each option.From the four retrofit
In addition to these designs, the most viable option is the "verticle/inclined plane."we also tested for the three limiting parameters of foam formation from water jets.
Studying different parameters for foam formation
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We were able to document results for each variation of the designs visually with photographs and short movies on cameras.
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Testing for Three Limiting Parameters of Foam Formation from Water Jets
The experiment proved that the three parameters: the average velocity of jets, the type of surface, and the length the water travels down the incline, all matter. To test for the significance of the average velocity of the jets we increased flow rate from 380ml/min to 416 ml/min using the same 0.17 in diameter tubing and observed that there was more bubble formation with the higher flow rate in all instances of the experiment. From the experiment we also observed that when the jet hit a hard surface there was far less bubble formation then when it hit the water surface. This proves that in order for the inclined plane option to work, the plane cannot be partially submerged in water or have a significantly thick wet surface. The last parameter was tested by varying the proximity of the 45o inclined plane to the tube. We noticed that when the inclined plane further away from the opening of the tube the water there was far less bubble formation because the water traveled a longer length down the plane before it joined the water surface at the bottom. The closer the inclined plane was to the opening of the tube the more bubble formation was observed given that the distance the water traveled down the plane after hitting the plane surface was greatly reduced. It is believed that the shorter the length the water travels down the inclined plane the shorter time for the velocity of the water to gradually decrease with gravity.
Conclusions
At the end of all of our testing, we determined that inserting a 5cm-diameter pipe would effectively reduce the amount of bubbles produced by the LFOM, while not constricting the overall plant flow rate. Hopefully this design change can be easily executed in the AguaClara plants in Honduras to fix the foam problem.