3D Printing Technology

For the two smaller tanks, we used FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) 3D printer and the printing material is ABS engineering plastics. The plastic melts inside the nozzle, which moves in the X and Y directions and the printing platform moves in the Z direction. Then the melted plastic is stacked on the printing platform to form a solid object.

The larger, more complex main treatment tank was printed using SLA (Stereolithography) which uses a laser to cure liquid resin into hardened plastic in a process called photopolymerization.

The process of 3D printing

Requirements

Design an effluent treatment device based on yeast to absorb nickel ions. The device needs to allow effluent to enter the treatment pool to let yeast to absorb nickel ions. Then discharge the water after treatment. At the same time it needs to be easy to replace yeast. What’s more the entire device has to guarantee the microbiological safety.

According to the design requirements, we had determined the design as follows.

The device is divided into three parts: Collection Tank, Treatment Pool and Outlet Sump.

1. The Collection Tank: The Collection Tank is used to accumulate effluent as it is produced by the factory. When sufficient volume has been collected, the process moves on to the next phase.

2. Treatment Pool: The effluent is pumped from the Collection Tank into the Treatment Pool under automated control. A calculated amount of yeast gel balls are then lowered into the pool inside a straining container. Air is pumped through a series of pipes and a pattern of openings built into the base of the Treatment Pool to continually move the effluent around and through the yeast gel balls to improve efficiency of the process.

3. Outlet Sump: When treatment is complete, the Strainer containing the yeast gel balls is raised from the Treatment Pool. Then the automated system pumps the cleaned water into the Outlet Sump. This sump has a semi-permeable membrane on its outlet pipe as a safety precaution against the release of any of our engineered yeast should it come free of the gell balls.

After determining the design, we started the modeling of the device. The software used was SOLIDWORKS, and finally we got the 3D model of the assembly drawing of the whole device.