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Before beginning any experiment, the goal for our team was to better acquaint ourselves to the experimental set-up and concepts of the tube flocculator. I read several documents explaining some of the ideas necessary for the experiment, such as Fractal Flocculation Model Part 1 and a an MS thesis written by Ian Tse. The thesis was an essential guide for our team since it explained not only the Mathcad code we will be using throughout our experiments, but also the gave the overall goals, ideas, and summary on past experiments for the tube flocculator.
After reading the documents, to get hands-on experience, my group and I decided to replicate a past experiment. From this, we learned how to use Mathcad and got a better idea on understanding of how to analyze data.
After this first task, our team moved on to our first main challenge (see challenge 2 listed). With the experiment group setting up the apparatus and running the experiments, I was assigned to process the data retrieved from each experiment through Mathcad and analyze the overall result. In the beginning, Laura and I narrowed down the alum dosage range based on the information given from the datalog. However, realizing that our approximations and speculations did not have a firm basis, rather than narrowing down the alum dosagereading the datalogs ourselves, we changed our method of analysis to be based on the graphs from Mathcad. With each alum dosage, the experiment team varied the flocculator length. And with each set of data I processed through Mathcad, I documented patterns, discontinuities, and any particular trend trends that needed to be noted. With the Mathcad code modified by Sophie, I was also able to find the overall mean residual turbidity for which drew a better understanding of the trend in the experiment. overall summary of the experiment.
With the results and analysis we've completed so far, our team created the Wiki page. In the mid-term Wiki, I contributed in the Results and Discussion part of experiment 2. And with the final Wiki draft, following comments made on the mid-term Wiki and adding more information we have retrieved from recent experiments, I cleaned up the documents created for each experiment, edit them, and uploaded them online. I wrote the introduction to the section for analysis of
Getting the results from the new flocculator with varying alum dose, Laura and I processed the data through Mathcad and analyzed the datalog to narrow down the alum dosage range. We documented the conclusion we got from this experiment and started to write up the wiki page related to this experiment. I wrote and posted the Results and Discussion part of experiment 2 (https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/AGUACLARA/Experiment+2%2C+Effect+of+alum+dose+and+flocculator+length).
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