Date of Award

2020

Degree Type

Capstone Project

Abstract

Neptune-Benson Evoqua Water Technologies is renowned for delivering products, solutions, and services to ensure water quality and consistency for municipalities, industrial water users and recreational facilities. Their Defender® Series X filters are also their top of the line water filter providing more power and efficiency for less space compared to the standard sand filters, while also removing particles as small as 1 micron. These exact filters can be found in Olympic swimming pools, many famous aquariums and water parks across the world.

Instead of using sand as the media for filtration, the Defender® X filter uses Perlite, which has tremendous pore space and traps large amounts of particulates. In order to utilize these properties of Perlite, flex tubes were used to serve as a container for the media during the whole filtration process and are recoated on a daily basis. However, the current 4-foot long flex tubes will eventually deform due to water pressure and forces present in the tank and are commonly recognized as a sign of malfunction to many customers. In addition, the price for the current flex tubes required in the filter is relatively expensive, since there are about 2,300 tubes in one filter tank alone, which significantly decreases the interest for these filters.

Therefore, the goal of this project is to not only design a more durable tube to withstand longer duration of hydrostatic forces with minimal deformation, but to also reduce the overall cost of these flex tubes. Research has been done to pinpoint areas that can be modified to achieve these goals along with virtual simulations to finalize the concept. This leads to changing the material and a redesign to the body of the tube, which will be shown and explained throughout the report. Upon conducting engineering analysis, it was proven that bending results were acceptable for the new tube, a testing apparatus was designed to mimic the environment in the Defender® series filter to further test and provide concrete evidence of both the performance and the improved durability of the new tubes. Lastly, a financial analysis was generated detailing expenses that incurred throughout the project and how the goal of cost reduction has been fulfilled.

Comments

Sponsor: Neptune-Benson Evoqua Water Technologies

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