Development of a micro flow control system

• Main Author: Muhamad Rashid Mustafa.
• Other Authors: Gong Haiqing, Thomas
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Control engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45930
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Cryptosporidium and Giardia are single-celled, microscopic organisms and are disease-causing parasites that may infect people through contaminated drinking water and recreational waters. Symptoms resulting from infection include mild to severe diarrhea, abdominal cramps, weight loss, bloating, and vomiting. Chlorine, a commonly used disinfectant in water supplies, can eliminate Giardia from water sources, but may not eliminate Cryptosporidium. Concentrating waterborne pathogens that are filtered from huge volumes of water is a key step in effective parasite identification. Here, major manufacturing issues and considerations in filtration, concentration and collection are explored and investigated, including cartridge design, leakage of water during the filtration process, and effectively collecting the filtered pathogen of interest. Latex beads the size of the smallest Cryptosporidium oocysts (3 µm) are used to simulate the actual water parasite for the filtration, concentration and collection of filtrate. To streamline the identification process of small number (<1000) of waterborne pathogens in huge amounts of water (1 – 1000 litres), a process has been discovered to integrate all the processes with one filter cartridge.