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Results and Discussion
Obstacles
The main challenges that our team has faced so far this semester have been determining reasonable tube diameters to test, finding an adequate tube settler apparatus, and remedying problems that have presented during the setup of our apparatus.
The determination of the tube settler diameters is discussed in the Sedimentation section above. The design of our experiment, including determination of a tube settler piece superior to the straws used this summer, was facilitated by our collaboration with Matt Hurst and Professor Weber-Shirk. The design that we are using is based on Matt Hurst's current apparatus.
Some of the challenges that have presented in our system are: leaking tubes, water not flowing out of two of the six tube settlers (Paul wisely advised us to move our effluent tube to the top of the manifold which solved this problem), unsteady flow through tubes (to be addressed with added buffers), rapid decrease of the water-level in the clay/water bucket (maybe we will add a pump), inconsistent flow of waste from above floc blanket, and air bubbles entering flocculator from aeration in bucket (to be addressed by moving aerator).
We look forward to addressing these and other challenges very soon. Flow into bottom bucket
Flow through
Graphs and results from trials
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