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Flocculation in water treatment plants is essential as it helps settle out colloidal particles with the use of a coagulant agent to facilitate particle collision and growth. For the The AguaClara Tube Floc Team, the team's goal is to conduct experiments to further understand and optimize hydraulic flocculation. Specifically, the team will narrow down key design parameters such as the optimum length of the flocculator and optimum alum doses for each length and varying influent conditions tested.
Experiments were conducted to find the optimum alum dosages for different lengths of the flocculator and different influent turbidities. From these experiments so far, it's evident that as alum dosages increase, the residual turbidity decreases. However, at a certain point, a limit is reached where residual turbidity remains constant as alum dosage increases. Also these experiments have shown that with increased flocculator length, the behavior of the floc depends on whether the influent turbidity is high or low. The optimum alum dose seems to decrease as we increase flocculator length. This suggests that alum costs can be reduced by designing a flocculator of an appropriate length. Alum dose and flocculator length also affect the mean sedimentation velocities as well as the coefficient of variation of the velocities distribution. These effects vary with influent turbidities. At 100 NTU, mean sedimentation velocities increase and the coefficient of variation decrease up to a certain alum dose and then velocities decrease and the coefficients of variation increase. For 500 NTU, Mean mean sedimentation velocities increase and coefficients of variation decrease until they both reach until it reaches a threshold traducing reflecting the presence of equilibrium in the flocculator.
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The turbidity of water is caused by colloidal particles in suspension (and the presence of natural organic matter and other organic and inorganic contaminants). Colloidal particles are too small to settle and due to their negatively charged surfaces, electrostatically repel each other. Flocculation transforms colloidal particles into larger flocs that can settle out in the sedimentation tank. The probability (collision potential) that particles collide number of sequential collisions in a flocculator depends on energy dissipation rate and residence time in the flocculator. As flocs collide, they grow in size making it easier to remove them in subsequent processesthe sedimentation tank.
There are different types of flocculation, such as charge neutralization and sweep flocculation. In AguaClara, the sweep flocculation methods are utilized, in which we need to add a coagulant agent, alum for our purpose, which forms a precipitate of aluminum hydroxide that covers particles and enables them to stick together when they collide in the flocculator. However, charge neutralization is also occuring occurring in the flocculator and it is actually the predominant mecanism mechanism for high turbidity water.
Conventional design guidelines for a hydraulic flocculator are incomplete and the dynamics of how physical parameters affect flocculation are not well understood. The goal of the Tube Floc Team is to try to improve the understanding of flocculation for a variety of influent water qualities and provide better guidelines in designing a flocculation system.
Conventional design characterizes characterize a flocculator with a laminar velocity gradient, G, and residence time, θ (Tambo and Watanabe, 1979). Because these are known parameters in literature the team has adopted them into its research, which can be characterized using a laminar tube flocculatorAlthough Gθ doesn't apply to turbulent flow flocculators, it is an appropriate parameterization of laminar flow flocculators such as the tube flocculator used in this research. Currently the Tube Floc team is studying the effects of length and alum dose on varying influent turbidities and will determine the optimal values for these two conditions.
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Currently, this project has not been completed, and not enough data has been collected to for a solid conclusion. Therefore, as for now, the team is focusing on the collection and organization of different experimental data. The results to each experiment has been organized in an excel file for a graphical overview and finding of errorserror analysis. Replicates of each experiments experiment have also been made for verification of the collected data. The following link will show more details on the data gathered from the experiments conducted.
*Effect of Alum dose and Flocculator length on Tube Flocculator Performance
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