Christine Barnett's Individual Contribution Page

Fall 2008

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Semester Contributions

For the Fall 2008 semester, I have been on the Flocculation group of the Pilot Plant Team. Within the Flocculation group, we  I have been working with the Tube Flocculator and the Uniform Vertical Flow Hydraulic Flocculator. Since I am new to the project, I 've spent a lot of time this semester learning about the beginning of the semester learning about flocculation and the set up at the pilot plant and the experiments we plan to do this semester.  In the beginning of the semester, we had some set-backs with a leak, so we have just started testing uniform baffle spacing in .  After the leak was resolved, we started Uniform Baffle Testing in the vertical flow hydraulic flocculator, and interpreted the results. Henry and I calculated the number of baffles and the baffle spacing for non-uniform spacing and put the baffles together.  We will begin testing non-uniform baffle spacing next week. In the lab, we have been cleaning out the vertical flow hydraulic flocculator with a pump, cleaning the turbidimeters and then testing the turbidity of the water at different points in the tank. We tried to start testing on the tube flocculator, but failed because we could not seem to get the air bubbles out of the tube. The bubbles seem to appear at the transition to clear tubing, so we may try to replace the clear tubing in order to solve this problem.
However, we later determined that for proper energy dissipation, the uniform spacing must not exceed 13.2 cm.  Also, for the results to be comparable, the last section of the tapered configuration had to match the uniform spacing.  After we performed calculations and determined the correct baffle spacing, I cut the pvc pipes and we assembled the new configurations for our experiments. The Flocculation group also had the task of organizing the Flocculation section of the Pilot Plant Wiki page.  Earlier in the semester, I was in charge of organizing the Overview and Methods and Research sections of the Uniform Vertical Flow Hydraulic Flocculator page.  Results from the Methods and Research section ended up being moved to a new Results section.  The   The task of organizing the Uniform Vertical Flow Hydraulic Flocculator page involved moving links into easily understood categories in order to make the information more easily accessible and creating new links information easily accessible.  It also involved creating new pages, such as Grab Sample Turbidity Testing, Testing of Uniform Baffle Configuration, and Testing and Tank Modifications which I ended up moving under the Construction History section.  I contributed to the Final Wiki Report by writing the Abstract and the Introduction and Objectives pages.

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