Designing a filtration fibre for a small community in southwestern Ontario adjacent to the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant — a system that had to strip nuclear waste out of runoff water.
As a team, we were tasked with designing a filtration fibre for a small community in southwestern Ontario adjacent to the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant.
This system needed to effectively remove nuclear waste from the runoff water.
We worked as a team to analyze different materials based on their properties, using Gantt charts, decision matrices, eco-audits and external research. We picked Polyethylene as our final choice for the material.
We weren’t done there; we then designed each filter fibre, taking into account the nano-pore and centre-pore sizes required for the scenario, and evaluated the material properties with this new porosity.
We must design a filter that effectively removes contaminants from wastewater without harming the environment. This filter must withstand nuclear wastewater runoff and effectively remove nanoparticles.
Our objectives for our chosen material are that it be sustainable, effective, and available. We will achieve this by selecting a material with low cost, low thermal conductivity, high-pressure tolerance, renewability, and radiation resistance. We are constrained by the overall filter size, which must fit within the given cylindrical volume.
After going through the design process, we landed on Polyethylene as our choice because it had superior material properties and environmental benefits unmatched by the other runner-ups. We then constructed the filter with a porosity of 0.099, resulting in a yield strength 81% of its original value.
As a team, we believe this filter would function well if implemented and are confident we could adhere to the regulations. Our end product was low-cost and eco-friendly, which were the two main objectives we set out to achieve. With all this done, we gave a live presentation; the link to the slides is below.
As a team, we worked through the design process, starting with research into what makes a good mechanical filter and the regulations we would need to comply with. Following that, we set objectives and created MPIs to narrow the list of materials. We then made a decision matrix to compare and contrast material properties. We performed porosity calculations before conducting eco-audits of the materials to gauge the environmental impacts of our three main options. We then organized all our data and made an informed decision on the final material selection.
When doing the research for the materials, we were each assigned an MPI to derive and interpret. I was assigned the strength/price MPI and derived the equation below. Using this equation, I graphed it on an Ashby chart and narrowed it down to the top 5 material choices.
I made major contributions to the calculation portion of the project, as we experimented with different porosities. I led the charge in doing these calculations as I deeply understood them. When we were having trouble determining the right pore size and number of pores, I created a spreadsheet to reverse-engineer the equations and derive them mathematically, rather than just guessing and checking.
As we began to finalize and interpret our data, I played another key role in analyzing the eco-audits. I was able to find some key mistakes we made while conducting the reports. Polyethelene delivered extremely low results compared to the rest, to the point where it wasn’t even comparable. We discovered this was because, for two of the materials, the mass was entered as the total for the 300 filters rather than per filter. This was a huge mistake, and fixing this made our numbers align better. I then created a graphical summary of the eco-audits for our presentation.
When it came time for the slide show, I worked on some key analytical slides. The first was the decision matrix slide, where I colour-coded it and added fun graphics to make it easier to interpret at a glance. I then worked on the final material selection slide to showcase Polyethelene and provide information about the material. For the porosity slide, I worked to summarize our calculations and created a graphical representation of what our fibre would look like. I also showcased the effects the porosity would have on the fibre. I also created the eco-audit slide to showcase the results and compare materials across categories to better understand the energy breakdown. Lastly, I co-created the objectives and constraints slide with another team member to provide a visual representation of how these goals would affect the filter.