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In order to help AguaClara grow into a professional organization, we have found it was necessary to create a single document that provides a brief but sufficient description of AguaClara plant processes. This will allow engineers considering AguaClara to get a better idea of what our technology is really all aboutwill give interested engineers a succinct technical description of Aguaclara plants and processes. The document has been integrated into the AguaClara Design Tool, and it automatically tailors equations and variables to a specific design. This allows engineers and other interested local officials to reasonably estimate the feasibility of constructing an AguaClara plant in their community.

Audience

The documentation is meant to be read by municipal engineers working for municipalities that who are interested in building a plant using our AguaClara designs. As such, it will contain technical information at a sufficient depth to give a general overview. This will include important equations, customized design values, and elevations taken from AutoCAD drawings.

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The final document will be organized in the following manner:

First, there will be a summary of the user specified values that were used in the design.

Then, there will be , we will provide an overview of the Aguaclara AguaClara technology . We which will run go through the purification process from beginning to end, describing each of the steps that are taken along the way. Specifically, we will focus on step. Specific steps include the chemical doser, rapid mixingmixer, flocculation, the inlet channel, sedimentation, and the exit channel.
Each section will include the customized mathematical design values generated by the design tool (for example, the length of each of the baffles in the vertical flocculator, the number of flocculator channels required, etc)

Because sedimentation is such an involved process, it will The complexity of sedimentation requires that it be broken down into several different the following sections:
1. Inlet pipe
2. Slopes (bottom geometry)
3. LamellaPlate settler support frame
4. Plate settlers
5. Plate settler modules
6. Effluent launder
5 7. Sludge Drains

Second, we will discuss the AguaClara process and its limitations more generally. This section is still in its infancy, but we plan to discuss the reasons why a process that uses no electricity can only remove turbidity to a certain extent. This is one of the main reasons why AguaClara plants cannot currently be constructed in the United States.

Third, we will discuss the costs associated with the construction of an AguaClara plant. We will break the costs down by type (upfront, during construction, etc..), and we will provide a ballpark estimate of the total price tag of a plant.

The Materials List section will summarize the materials needed for construction. This practical resource currently covers the Entrance Tank, the Flocculator, and the Sedimentation Tank. As a compact source of information, this section provides at-a-glance access for all users of the Design Tool, whether AguaClara members or users from around the world, to compare plant designs.

Finally, there will be a more general discussion of the capabilities of the AguaClara process. This section will discuss why a process that achieves such high turbidity removal without any input of electricity at all whatsoever is truly revolutionary. It will also touch on current research efforts focused on further improving effluent water quality (for example, the development of floc blankets and filtration systems)Finally, we will provide a brief description of past Aguaclara plants and current research.

How it works

Upon completion, the AguaClara manual will be extremely beneficial because it will give engineers a general overview of the Aguaclara process , but and it will also provide a tailored set of values pertinent to the design under consideration. These values will be inserted into the document automatically through the use of a LabView script which will replace variables with custom values for the design. We LabView will also take advantage of this to turn "switches" built in with Microsoft Word fields (Please see the separate set of instructions which were prepared regarding how to use MS Word Fields). This will allow us to do things like the document to be customized to provide information about either options such as horizontal or vertical flocculation based on the specific design.

Final

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Notes

1. The AguaClara manual We would like to emphasize that the AguaClara manual we are creating is meant to be used as a reference - for a complete set of mathematical design values and drawings, engineers will still have to run the design tool and open the documents that it generates. reference the rest of the documents and drawings provided by the design tool.
2. We are trying to develop a process whereby drawings would be plotted automatically in AutoCAD