Project Summary

The last week or so we have made some more changes to our systems. We even got the other two systems going like the one system we had running with CO2. We havent added CO2 to any other systems yet because we are still trying to get them to keep the gas in the water. To keep gas dissolved in the water is such a hard thing because we have flow thru water at Hatfield. The pH is different every day and the incoming water is always different than what we try to keep the pH at. The pH of seawater should be 8.1 and yesterday it was at the lowest 7.59 so we had a lot of experimenting to get the pH up to what we want. We changed the design in the sump to a much easier and effective design.

Before on left. After on right.

As you can see the newer design is much easier to look at and follow. We still have the white cylinder which was used as a countercurrent system, which has an air diffuser stone at the bottom and inflow of water at the top. This process helps incorporate the gas into the water. We ended up taking it apart and removing the gas going into the cylinder and adding a venturi to the inflow of water to the cylinder. The venturi adds the gas into the water before going into the cylinder. We also added one to the tubing that goes to a canister filter which leads to the systems with the algae in them. Adding the venturis to the system improved the amount of gas going into the water and changing the pH of the water more effectively. This is the end of the internship and its crazy to think its over tomorrow. It went by fast and I enjoyed this experience.