As a member of the 2011 Water Pump Team, I, along with my partners Patrick Farnham, Michael Liu, and Weiling Xu, are working worked to develop a pumping system that is specifically optimized useful for transferring water two meters elevation from the settled water channel to the chemical stock tanks in an AguaClara plant.After much research and debate we have decided to focus a few designs that we feel would best suite our needs. These include the piston lever pump, treadle pump, and diaphragm pump.
Our main goal for this project is to either develop a pumping system that is better for the AguaClara treatment plants than what is currently on the market or be able to come to a direct conclusion that purchasing a prefabricated pump is the better course of action.
Currently I am working with my teammates to complete the calculations that will assist us in narrowing down the design options.After working with my team on the equations used to model these systems and subsequently find the best parameters to which to build our pumps I was able to take a lead roll in the building and testing of our findings. Being the most experienced with fabrication techniques needed to construct our prototypes I was put in charge of this part of our project and made sure that our pumps were created such that they were accurate representations of our designs.