Sensor Development

Spring 2017

The Sensor Development Team will be continuing work on the fluidized bed solids concentrator sensor. The primary goal this semester is to determine a more accurate calibration curve of solid concentrations in fluidized bed reactors using the existing photosensor LED light. The team will collaborate with the AFB team subteam to determine the maximum concentration of solids in untreated wastewater. Using these values and the calibration curve, we will determine the lowest intensity of light needed to detect the suspended particles, without washing out the image. The next task will be to design and fabricate a floc hopper probe that measures the depth of flocs within the floc hopper. The probe will allow the team to determine when the floc hopper needs to be cleaned. The probe will be tested in the 1 L/s plant. 

Fall 2016

The Sensor Development Team is a new team for the Fall 2016 semester. The team was created in response to the needs of the UASB and AFB teams. The primary goals of this team were to develop a gas measurement sensor that can be used in AguaClara wastewater subteams, as well as design and build a fluidized bed solids concentrator sensor that can be used by other AguaClara subteams. This semester, we finalized a method of gas measurement, programmed settings in ProCoDa to automate the systems, and built the next generation of the measurement system. For the fluidized bed solids concentrator sensor, we built and calibrated a sensor that detects LED light shining through a clear PVC pipe containing granules to output granule concentrations in ProCoDa for the AFB team. This sensor can be modified for other subteams, as needed.