Sedimentation Tank Experiments

Below are the 3 versions of our Sedimentation Tanks:

Closed Top Tank:

Open Top Tank:

Parallel Lamella Tank:

Procedure

We ran our Demo Plant with the above tanks at 50, 100, and 150mL/min and averaged our trials in order to observe which sedimentation tank resulted in the lowest turbidity overall.

Results

Graph of Comparison at 50mL/min:

Graph of Comparison at 100mL/min:

Graph of Comparison at 150mL/min:

Conclusion

From this data, we observed that at 100mL/min and 150mL/min the Open Top design produced the lowest turbidity. At 50mL/min, the Parallel Lamella design resulted in the lowest turbidity. Since we care most about how the plant runs at 100mL/min, we determined that the Open Top tank was the best for our purposes.