All posts by Elliot hall

Thats a wrap~!

With this being the last week we started testing a new version of the greywater reactor dubbed GEN 2!

The Gen 2 reactor runs water through its base while an aerator supplies bubbles forcing foam to form and flow up the cylinder. It eventually collects at the top where it condenses back into liquid and flows down the white tube into the base to be recycled and cleaned even more. The idea behind this model was to increase water recovery while still having high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) removal.

Week 5! ITS ALIVE!!!

We have begun to try new things with our current reactor since it has to be destroyed in order to make a new one. Since the foam backing up seems to be the problem we are going to use a vacuum to suck out the foam preventing back up. Success!!!! The vacuum did its job, it also broke my ears! The foam never backed up, in fact we were able to see the central cylinder throughout the entire test.

Here you can see the foam slowly moving towards the vacuum outlet
Here you will see the foam slow down as I turn off the vacuum to its normal flowrate

At the end of the tests we only had 680 mL of foam water which was a huge success.

Just as everything seemed to be going write I tested our samples and everything went out the window again. pH and COD went up on each test instead of down like they’re suppose to. Back to the drawing board again…….

Missing Monday really throws off your week!

New week same problems! Our hope was that once we swapped the intake and outflow of the water in the reactor, foam would stop flowing back into the clean water bucket….. You know put dirty water in, add bubbles, and get foam that removes the bad stuff. Well……………………………………………….

Hooked up and going smoothly
Looks good so far
Nooooooo wrong bucket foam
Foam why do you hate us

It didn’t work so back to the drawing board we go! We started this week figuring out what the ideal water flow needed to be with clean water and aeration to stay level. We did this for multiple air flowrates. The catch to this is that all of these numbers are going to change once we add in the synthetic greywater. I did learn a ton of new information about the project from an in person meeting with my PI Dr. Westerhoff. Off to the races with more trial and error in the search for answers!

Getting the routine down!

This week was all about getting learning about the project, understanding measurements, charts, tables, routines, and so much more! The first two days of the week I spent most of the time reading articles and filling out PowerPoints explaining the purpose of all the perimeters in the project. Once that had been completed I was able to move onto learning how to come up with Theoretical Oxygen Demand!

After going through and finding the Theoretical Oxygen Demand for each of the chemicals being used I then moved onto determining the appropriate weight in mg for 500mL. Once that was done it was on to measuring out/weighting 12 different chemicals on a daily basis.

I really struggled when I had chemicals that only needed 5mg and a what would seem like a single spec would make the scale go up to 10mg immediately. The others in the lab defiantly had a great time watching me the first few days. Once that was all done I took it downstairs to the High bay and mixed it up with Di water and a vortex genie. Next step was to get it all inside the reactor. The reactor is double cylinder one inside another. We put the greywater mixture into the middle cylinder seal the top and apply air pressure so that everything is pressurized. There is a metal aerator like a fish tank bubbler in the bottom of the liquid cylinder that we supply air to while controlling the air rate.

Here you can see the water in the middle cylinder and a little bit of foam.

This is how we control the amount of air entering the reactor.
This is an example of the foam coming down the outer cylinder where it will collect and form back into water.
We have an exit at the bottom of the outer cylinder so that we can collect foam water for testing.

This process takes 90 minutes today from start to finish. We keep track of water level and how long it takes to drop every 50mL. Water samples are collected at the beginning and every 30minutes plus a foam sample and carbon sample from the foam. After all of this is done we test for Ph, conductivity, total dissolved solids, turbidity, temp, and chemical oxygen demand. Once all that is done it is inputted into spreadsheets for comparison and clean up is started.

Week 1 has begun!

Well what can I say other than we’re off to the races! Six weeks is a short amount of time and there is a-lot to do in a short time. I met one of my mentors today Dr. Jirapah! She is highly energetic and matches my energy level perfectly. We started off going over where all of our materials were located in the labs along with how we would get from different labs with our chemicals. Dr. Jirapah not only showed me where everything is she even gave me a demonstration on how everything worked on day one! I am starting tomorrow with calculating the Theoretical Oxygen Demand of each of the twelve chemicals that are used to create our greyscale mixture. Below I have included a couple screen grabs from Dr. Jirapah’s ppt with captions.

These are the things that go into the water in your house to create what we call greyscale water.
This is Dr. Jirapah’s current module.
This is my schedule as of now, unless I work faster or break something………

Why Hello There!

My name is Elliot Hall and I have been teaching for roughly eleven and a half years so far. Nine of those years have been as a sixth grade science teacher. In my free time I love to play video games with my son and watch shows with the wife.

The lab that I will be working in this year is run by Dr. Westerhoff, and my mentor will be Dr. Sinha. The lab project is a humanitarian project about Solar-disinfection windows. The purpose is to provide safe drinking water to areas where they do not currently have this need met. The research will be taking place at ASU TEMPE.

         I am excited about getting back into the research mindset and learning lots of new information. This will be my 2nd year in the NEWT RET program and I am looking forward to new experiences.