rl564

Fall 2012

This semester I'm a member of Tube Floc team. The past members of this team have already tested how hydraulic retention time, coagulant dose, water solution properties influence the removal efficiency. My task for this semester is to break large flocs based on calculation of energy dissipation rate to see if this is helpful for improving flocculation performance. This task can be divided into 2 steps: first, I need to reproduce Dr. Karen Swetland's past experiments as a baseline for future experiments; second, in this baseline,  the residual turbidity will be measured under the same experimental conditions but with breakup of large flocs at regular intervals. 

Throughout this semester, I encountered many problems operating the apparatus, Process Controller, Data Processor, etc. I summarized the problems and troubleshooting in this page. This is a GOOD REFERENCE for future members on this team. I successfully obtained the baseline using the same method as Spring 2012 Team did on 06/29/12. The description of this method is in my final report. 

At the end of this semester, I added 6 clamps onto the flocculator (2 on each unit, evenly distributed) as floc breakup device. Then I ran the experiments using the method I used as a baseline and achieved amazing results of residual turbidity with an increase of coagulant dose. Breaking large flocs will improve flocculator performance and thus our design of the flocculator needs to be devised that allow floc breakup at regular intervals.