CIVL 1112 - Assignment #3

 Name: ________________________

 

"Man learns in two ways: by doing, and by being done."  -   Unknown

Objective

The primary purpose of this assignment is to familiarize yourself with the Excel spreadsheet program and develop a tool to help you estimate the yearly cost of operating your project treatment system.

You must hand in the cover sheet for the assignment, your calculations for Parts 1, and printouts of your spreadsheets for Parts 2 and 3. Also, submit your spreadsheets for Parts 2 and 3 to Canvas.

Part 1: Compute the yearly costs of a full-size water treatment system (WTS) based on your prototype treatment work in the lab. Use the values for the full-scaled WTS as listed in the project description. This application will aid you in designing and testing your system for the first project. To familiarize yourself with the computational procedure, by hand, estimate the costs associated with a prototype treatment system with the following characteristics:

  • flowrate into the system of 1,000 ml/min

  • system run time of 45 minutes

  • filter consists of 2 inches of anthracite and 6 inches of filter sand

  • coagulant dosage of 30 mg/l

  • prototype sedimentation tank has 2 chambers that are active

Part 2: Develop a spreadsheet to estimate yearly costs of a full-size WTS. Use the values for the full-scaled WTS as listed in the project description. Check your spread sheet with the results from Part 2 and with the following prototype treatment system:

  • flowrate into the system of 900 ml/min

  • system run time of 50 minutes

  • filter consists of 2 inches of anthracite and 6 inches of filter sand

  • coagulant dosage of 60 mg/l

  • prototype sedimentation tank has 4 chambers that are active

 

Part 3: Use your cost spreadsheet developed in Part 2 to estimate yearly costs of each of the prototype WTS run in lab this week. Tabulate your WTS cost data by flowrate and the number of sedimentation tanks used in the prototype runs and then construct a graph from the data.

 

Part 4. Read the Chapters 5 and 6 in the "A Mind for Numbers" by Barbara Oakley.