TESTING AND OPTIMIZING AN APPROPRIATE FLOW DEPENDENT CHLORINATOR FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD
Open Access
Author:
Smyth, Kerri Ann
Area of Honors:
Civil Engineering
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Richard Schuhmann, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Richard J Schuhmann, Thesis Supervisor Eric Todd Donnell, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
chlorination developing world
Abstract:
Potable drinking water is important for the health and livelihood of every human being, yet many people lack access to this basic necessity. Chlorination is a relatively simple and inexpensive way to purify water, yet appropriate and sustainable technology to do so in rural developing world communities is lacking. Many existing devices do not account for varying water flow through a pipeline or simply have not proven to be reliable. The chlorination device presented in this paper is inexpensive, made of readily available materials, and can be adjusted to specific water systems to provide the appropriate dosage of chlorine depending on the volumetric water flow rate. It uses an orifice plate inserted into a PVC pipe to restrict the flow of water, thereby increasing the downstream velocity and creating a vacuum. A hole just after the orifice plate allows the vacuum to pull a chlorine solution into the PVC pipe through a small tube. The higher the volumetric flow of water, the greater the vacuum; therefore, the amount of chlorine pulled into the line varies proportionally with flow rate. Testing of the device has (1) quantified the variability of the vacuum with flow rate, (2) indicated the optimum position for the chlorine injection tube, and (3) shown that the device is successful in providing an appropriate chlorine residual through tracer testing.
