An Improved Chemical Dose Controller

On Wednesday of last week, our Chemical Dose Controller team finished preparing a package to be sent out to India. The chemical dose controller is the part of our plant that administers coagulant and chlorine and it's an incredibly intricate piece of technology. The mechanism regulates the dosing of the desired chemical, adjusting dosages accordingly to complement the flow rate of the water through the plant. It's important to note that it achieves this without pumps or meters or anything other than gravity and some clever techniques. The team has also just finished adjusting the system to accommodate for lower flow rates for deployment in India.

The kit to India contained some new components for the CDC mechanism to be implemented there; there's even an instruction manual to be sent along with the parts, keeping with our goal of distributing technology that works well without the need for specialized knowledge or resources.

Next stop: India!

There was a problem concerning the lackluster performance of one component: it was found that one of the parts inside the valve slowly deteriorated from constant contact with chlorine, which jams the valve and prevents it from being properly maintained. 

The white part doesn't work well with chlorine in the long-run.

Luckily, Saugat and Zeyu, the two that make up the Chemical Dose Controller subteam, discovered what was happening and replaced the old valve with a new one that looks virtually identical in every respect, except that the knob is red. In the newer and much better model, what used to be EPDM rubber ring is now rendered in fluoroelastomer, a popular alternative to Teflon, the bulletproof material.

Bonus picture: a representation of the chemical dose controller mechanism. The actual mechanism doesn't look like this at all.

You can actually see the old valves with the blue knobs still attached; the newer ones have red knobs. This model, like the actual thing, is operated by gravity.