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CEE 453 Research Project Chris Garnic Nolan Rogers Creating Ideal Floc for Instant Startup of a Conical Flocculator. Research Goals. To create a working conical flocculator Find the proper concentrations of clay and alum to create floc
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CEE 453Research ProjectChris GarnicNolan RogersCreating Ideal Floc for Instant Startup of a Conical Flocculator
Research Goals • To create a working conical flocculator • Find the proper concentrations of clay and alum to create floc • Create a recipe for mixing procedures to create floc in a jar setup • Find the best transfer method from jar to conical flocculator • Generate acceptable drinking water in a short time period (Honduras)
Peristalic pump Mixing Device Cylinder and cone apparatus Solenoid valve Process Controller for flow regulation Pressure sensor to monitor flow Assortment of tubing Pump to regulate sludge blanket height (for prolonged periods of use) Clay, Alum, NaOH pH sensor Materials
Supplying influent to reactor • Delivering influent from the bottom via small 5 mm existing ports. • Passing influent down tubing to the bottom of the cone • What should the exit velocity of the influent be?
Jar Tests • 2 sets of 6 jar tests were conducted. • 5:1 clay to alum ratio • Constant 50 mg/L alum (turbidities ranging from 250-2000 NTU)
Graph of Jar Test Results Figure 5: Blue line shows the 5:1 clay to alum ratio while the pink line shows the constant 50 mg/L alum solution.
Recipe into the Reactor • Two different methods tested for performance of recipe in reactor • Funneling to create instant sludge blanket without disturbing clean water in the upper half of the reactor. • Complete mixing of solution in reactor
What went wrong… • Upside down funnel inside apparatus • Flow rate problems (too low) • Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3) versus Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) for pH adjustment • Settling basin was too small and turbulence mixed up settling floc
Recipe for Instant Floc • Add water to jar (amount of water would be 25% reactor volume) • Mix in 12 g/L clay, 2.4 g/L alum • Adjust for pH by adding 0.87 grams NaOH (For each gram of alum add .364 grams of NaOH) • Fast mix solution at 100 rpm for 1 minute • Slow mix solution at 30 rpm for 20 minutes • Add solution to reactor (that is already 75% full of water) • Completely mix water and solution
Conclusions • Our recipe for floc produced 2.15 NTU effluent water • Drinking water standards could be met via filtration • Floc can be produced in a jar test! • We effectively decreased the startup time of the conical flocculator to about 0.5 hours.
Suggestions/Comments • Test different cone angles and sizes • Test different flow rates • Test the effects of scaling up (Honduras)