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During the fall 2011 semester, I have worked on the Tube Flocculator Team. Our goal is to develop a fundamental understanding of flocculation and find the optimal condition for flocculation.
We spent the first portion of the semester studying the relationship between coagulant particle size and the flocculation efficiency. I read some literature about PACl working mechanism, and we assume the smaller coagulant particle size would have higher utilization. We use the filter to get the small size of coagulant, and expect the raw water treated by the vacuum filtered coagulant would have a lower residual turbidity compared with same amount of unfiltered coagulant. But the result was not satisfied and did not show a clear trend or relationship, thus, our team has not been able to progress significantly.
For the second portion of the semester, we began to study ionic strength's strength’s influence to the flocculate efficiency. We read some literature about Debye Length Theory, and sodium, calcium and other ions' ions’ influences to the flocculation efficiency. Current research shows tap water which has a high ionic strength performs quite well in flocculation, we are now using the simulation water (by adding controlled chemicals) and try to figure out which group of ion is exactly working for a better performance of flocculation.
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