Horizontal Filtration

In an optimized plant design, we would like to be able to manipulate geometry to reduce the required plan area. The best design would take advantage of placing the filter material in a vertical direction, with water flowing through the filter horizontally. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the filtering capacity of the foam material while in a vertical position, with water flowing through the column horizontally. To do this, we used the same experimental set up, and simply rotated the filter column onto its side.
Figure 1: Horizontal Filtration Experimental Setup

As shown in Figures 2 and 3, filter performance for this horizontal filtration experiment was not nearly as good as the filter performance achieved in previous vertical filtration experiments. This seems to indicate that while filter performance is not solely dependent on the film formation, it is nonetheless a vital component. While it may not be the film itself that enables a higher filtration capacity, it is indicative of higher filtration actually being achieved. Further tests with horizontal filtration are necessary to confirm this hypothesis. These are not the results that were expected from this trial, therefore, we must conduct further tests to explore the reasoning for these results, and to confirm that these were not in fact erroneous results.

Figure 2: Turbidity vs Time for Horizontal Filtration

Figure 3: pC* vs Time for Horizontal Filtration