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My contributions to the Laminar Tube Flocculator team include the writing of the Detailed Task List, the Research Paper, participating in the Base case testing, coming up with what experiments to conduct this semester, the reading of Ian Tse, Professor Lion, and Professor Monroe's papers on flocculation, speaking at symposiums presenting our work this semester, and adding input during problem solving for when the flocculator runs into an issue.
Spring 2014 Semester Contributions
Semester Goals
The Laminar Tube Flocculator Team hopes to finish the installation of the Settled Water Turbidity (SWaT) measurement system and run experiments similar to the ones we completed last semester. With the new turbidimeter system, there should be less flocculations in our data points. Therefore, clearer correlations can be drawn from the experimental data and conclusions regarding Karen Swetland's Floc Breakup Theory can be finalized.
Results
My contributions to the Laminar Tube Flocculator team include assisting in the design and implementation of the new SWaT system, researching and running tests on the new apparatus, participating in the writing of our research paper using the program Lyx, and giving public presentations of our research to the AguaClara advisers and fellow project team members.
The results for our research semester are that no concrete conclusions could be made towards the Floc Breakup theory because the new turbidmeter system still needs a lot of work and there are still many things we do not completely understand about SWaT. The research this semester has shown us that there are still improvements that need to be made to SWaT. Unfortunately, all the tests we have run so far are proving SWaT to be a worse residual turbidity measurement system than FReTA was. The NTU readings using SWaT were significantly higher than the NTU readings for FReTA at the same PACl dosage concentrations. Nonetheless, SWaT has been incorporated into the Laminar Tube Flocculator apparatus and Process Controller has been updated to the correct states.
Fall 2014 Semester Contributions
Semester Goals
The Laminar Tube Flocculator Team hopes to build off of the Summer 2014 Research Team's work on testing Floc Breakup Theory and make a final conclusion as to whether or not breaking up flocs in the midst of the flocculation process improves flocculator performance. Goals for this semester include running experiments using varying PACl dosages and finding an optimal PACl dosage that results in the best flocculation performance. Hopefully by the end of the semester, clearer correlations can be drawn from the experimental data and conclusions regarding Karen Swetland's Floc Breakup Theory can be finalized.