Vicki Chou's Individual Contribution Page

Laminar Tube Floc Team

Fall 2013 Semester Contributions

Semester Goals:

The Laminar Tube Floc Team is extending the work of previous semesters testing the hypothesis that "large flocs are useless." To do so, we are first testing a base case as a control experiment. The setup of the laminar tube flocculator is a series of three coiled tube arrangements (83m long). Our experiments will consist of testing the effects different sized clamps and different numbers of clamps on the middle tube arrangement have on floc breakup and residual turbidity. The results from our experiments will be used to further understand floc breakup and how to better improve the laminar flocculation system.

Progress:

The team has been able to run three base case experiments. One with PACl dosages of 0, 5-10 mg/L (increments of 1 mg/L) and two with PACl dosages according to the power law: PACl dosage = coefficient x base^maxreps (where coefficient = .25, base = 1.25, and maxreps = 10)

Preliminary results suggest that a PACl dose of 2 mg/L is sufficient in achieving the desired mean residual turbidity because all PACl doses above 2 mg/L yield similar results of around .8 NTU for the effluent.