Pablo Nistal, Kadambari Suri, Larissa Sakiyama, Priya Aggarwal

The Ram Pump subteam was charged with designing and optimizing a pump to

elevate a small amount of water in the plants to fill chemical stock tanks and to provide

bathroom services. A common testing issue has been low effluent flow rate compared to what

is expected at the plant. The Spring 2015 ram pump team has designed a new ramp pump

system which allows users of the ram pump to adjust the size of the spring in the ram pump to

provide for maximum efficiency. The team is working on testing each part of the system,

seeing what can be fixed and changed, and then implementing those changes. The team has

found that ultimately springs of varying spring constants and lengths provide similar flow

rates. The team has also found that an air chamber greatly improves the flow rate of the

system and bigger air chambers provide better flow rate than smaller ones.