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The goal of our research is to evaluate the feasibility of a siphon-aided backwash design to be used for a sand or mixed-media down-flow filter. The benefits of siphon-aided backwash is:
1) The height of the clear-well does not need to be equal to the the head pressure required to attain 30%-50% expansion.
2) The siphon tube is designed to fill up when the filters have reached a terminal headloss (a set point we determine). Thus, they only backwash when they are dirty.
3) Since the headloss energy is used to prime the siphon, and eventually trigger backwash, fewer valves are required which reduces cost and labor.

Foam Filtration

Currently, an AguaClara plant can produce effluent water after sedimentation with a turbidity of about 5 NTU. Our goal is to reduce the effluent turbidity to less than 1 NTU. One potential method of accomplishing this is adding a filtration unit to the AguaClara plants.

Numerous techniques of water filtration are in use today, most of which involve the use of sand as the porous media. After preliminary research revealed a lack of information on foam filtration, our team has decided to focus on investigating the actual filtering capacity of a polyurethane foam material as opposed to the traditional method of sand filtration. With proper implementation, a foam filter could reduce the amount of water that is wasted during the backwash cycle of a traditional sand filter. A foam filter could also potentially require less area, and be less expensive to build than a traditional sand filterA brief description/abstract here is needed.

Clear Well Backwash Filtration System

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