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

Objective

This assignment's primary purpose 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 3, and printouts of your spreadsheets for Parts 2 and 3. Also, submit your spreadsheets for Parts 2 and 3 to Canvas. You must follow the Excel format.

Part 1: Compute the yearly costs of a full-size water treatment system based (WTS) on our prototype WTS work in the lab. Use the cost model for the full-scaled WTS as described in the class notes. 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 800 ml/min

• system run time of 60 minutes

• the filter consists of 4 inches of anthracite and 4 inches of filter sand

• coagulant dosage of 35 mg/l

• prototype sedimentation tank has 4 active chambers

Part 2: Develop a spreadsheet to estimate the yearly costs of a full-size water treatment system. Use the cost model for the full-scaled WTS as described in the class notes. Check your spreadsheet with the results from Part 1 and with the following prototype treatment system:

• flowrate into the system of 900 ml/min

• system run time of 55 minutes

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

• coagulant dosage of 60 mg/l

• prototype sedimentation tank has 2 active chambers

Your spreadsheet should conform to the format of the following example. Click here for a template of the spreadsheet below.

Part 3: Use your cost spreadsheet developed in Part 2 to estimate the yearly costs of the prototype WTS runs from the lab (click here for WTS data). 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 (the figure below shows the typical organization and format of the graph).

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

Additional Resources

Microsoft Excel includes a built-in user manual and tutorial which are available through the Help option at the right end of Excel's main command line.

A web page describing the CIVL 1112  Excel Homework Policy is available. Please read it before you turn in each assignment this semester.

Cover sheet for homework