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The design challenge for the 2010 Spring AguaClara Filtration Team is to design a filtration system for the AguaClara water treatment plant. The filtration system must meet the following requirements. First, it must reliably treat the current AguaClara effluent water with a turbidity ranging from 5 to 10 NTU and produce water with turbidity less than 1 NTU. The filtration technology should not require any electricity. It should make minimal use of specialized components that would be difficult to acquire in remote communities. The filtration system should be easy to construct and to maintain.

Currently, the filtration team has made progress in three fields: clear well backwash, foam filtration, and siphon-aided backwash. Once divided up into those three sub teams, we each conducted a literature review of existing technology and research. We then developed initial designs based on our research and proceed to test the fundamental theories behind our design. For example, the foam filtration sub team tested the effectiveness of foam in reducing the turbidity of the water while the clear well backwash team developed a bench scale model to test the empirical equations behind the design.

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