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During Experiment 1, the following capture velocities were used: 5 m/day, 10 m/day, 15 m/day and 20 m/day0.058 mm/s, 0.116 mm/s, 0.174 mm/s and 0.231 mm/s. This experiment was set on low floc blanket formation.
Figure 1: Average Effluent Turbidity vs. Capture Velocity
(Do you by chance have the datalog uploaded for this experiment?)
Conclusions
As expected, the effluent turbidity is much significantly higher than that of the control experiment. The presence of saturated water in the influent has a negative effect on the effluent turbidity. In order to quantitatively examine the performance of the experiment with saturated water, data from the control ramp experiment was referenced. The average difference in error between the results was found to be 3.857 (What error and which results are you referring to on the graph? You can report standard deviation or relative standard deviation, but if you want to do this, I would suggest adding error bars for each point on the graph), with the effluent turbidity of the saturated water experiment generally higher turbidity for each flow rate tested was graphically compared to the control experiment. The standard deviations, graphed above, give a good idea of the breadth of the data. Comparing the two sets of data, the saturated water experiment had higher effluent turbidity in all cases than that of the control experiment. This data supports the perviously noted observation that the floc blanket appeared cloudy. The bubbles released as a result of a pressure drop in the system disturbed floc formation, allowing less floc particles to settle and more, smaller, lighter particles to leave with the effluent. (Note floc break-up as a cause since you noted cloudy water from observation before)
Experiment 2: Average Effluent Turbidity vs Velocity - High Floc Blanket Formation
During Experiment 2, the following velocities were used: 5 m/day, 10 m/day, 15 m/day and 20 m/day. This experiment was set on high floc blanket formation.
Figure 2: Average Effluent Turbidity vs. Capture Velocity
Conclusion
Similar to the data collected for There is not a large statistical difference between the saturated water experiment on low floc blanket formation, the effluent turbidity for the in comparison to the control experiment on high floc blanket formation is generally higher than that of the control experiment. In order to quantitatively examine the performance of the experiment with saturated water, data from the control ramp experiment was referenced. The average difference in error between the results was found to be .173 (Again, we need to also quantify the standard deviation in the data points to see if this is significant. Perhaps adding error bars would be helpful on the graph.), with the effluent turbidity of the saturated water experiment generally higher than that of the control experiment. The difference isn't as great as that found in the experiment with the low floc blanket formation due to the intitially low effluent turbidity for this particular experiment. High floc blanket formation already results in an increase in effluent turbidity. (I disagree with your conclusion here. I do not see a large statistical difference for influent water here. Can you speculate as to why there was less change here? Is it because the tube settler is already in the floc blanket and this experiment did not reflect acutal conditions because some air bubbles would go through the system but . This could be due to several reasons. It is possible that because the tube settler was already in the floc blanket, air bubbles went through the system but did not perturb performance locally in the tube settler? It is possible that saturated air had little effect and there was a problem with another problem in the experiment causing the worsened performance at the beginning?). Thus, this experiment did not reflect actual conditions. Another explanation is that saturated water did not affect the experiment significantly, but there was another factor causing worsened performance for the 5 m/day data. Based on the large error in the data, it is reasonable to say that there were small perturbations over short periods of time that caused the turbidity to be higher. In other words, the turbidity was not consistently higher.