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Lishan Zhu
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's Individual Contribution Page
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Spring
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2016 Contributions
I am advising the fluoride and public relations teams, and working as part of the High Rate Sedimentation - Plate Settlers team this semester. Sedimentation is the process that requires the largest plane view area in a water treatment plant, and this is due to the necessary slow upflow velocity to allow particles to fall down. In hopes of overcoming that obstacle, the two high rate sedimentation teams this semester are looking at ways of concentrating the floc blanket to permit this higher upflow velocity. The team I am a part of this semester will focus on using plate settlers in the floc blanket to concentrate floc particles.
Fall 2015 Contributions
I am advising the ram pump and StaRS Theory teams, and working as part of the EStaRS team this semester. The EStaRS filter currently has orifices in the inlet manifolds, which has not previously been tested in a full scale filter. This semester, we are looking to fine tune the filter for backwashing and verify that orifices are an effective method of fabrication. If all goes well, we plan on modeling head loss through the sand bed at various turbidities of influent water.
Spring 2014 Contributions
This semester, my team members and I are working on the Low Flow Stacked Rapid Sand filter (LFSRSF). One of the main challenges this semester is adding the piping, entrance, and exit tanks and making the system water-tight.
Fall 2013 Contributions
I joined the low flow stacked rapid sand filter team this semester, and was part of the sub-sub team that worked on fabricating a new 12 inch diameter filter from PVC pipe. This design will be the representative of the dimensions of sand filters currently being tested in India.
Spring 2013 Contributions
I joined the foam filtration team this semester, and this semester we plan to redesign the foam filter using two 4 inch PVC pipes filled with foam. One will serve as the rough filter, which will have foam with a lower pore density. The other will be the finishing filter, which has a finer pore foam so water that leaves the rough filter can enter the fine filter. We also need to find a way to build a new stand for the two filters that are made of 80/20 aluminum since that is not a viable choice to use in Honduras joined Aguaclara in the spring semester of 2013. Currently, I am working with Jenny Guan and Monica Kuroki on the foam filtration system. Our goal this semester is to make the design more transportable, efficient, and visually appealing. The system requires the water to flow without the use of any electricity or other sources of energy. This semester, we managed to increase the entrance tank size in order to allow a weight to fit in there for dosing of the coagulant. To accomplish this, new LFOM calculations were made and a new LFOM was built to fit inside the entrance tank. Additionally, the design for this semester uses Schedule-40 PVC pipe instead of 8020 steel for the stand. The PVC pipe is light, cost-effective, and readily available in countries such as the Honduras. At the end of this semester, we were able to construct a foam filter, new stand, and larger entrance tank. When we ran water through the filters, there were a few small leaks because they were not sealed in the case of future modifications. However, the water flowed from the entrance tank to the end of the finishing filter, so it did work as we intended. Future foam filtrations will be able to use the methods we documented in the progress reports to construct this foam filter and possibly attach a coagulant and chemical dosing system.