"Lishan Zhu"'s Individual Contribution Page

"Spring 2013" Contributions

I 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.