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EC.279 D-Lab: Design for Scale
Partner: Omiflo (Nairobi, Kenya)
Cambridge, MA
September-December 2024
helloFor my Design for Scale class, my team of 4 partnered with Omiflo, a Kenyan biotechnology company that focuses on wastewater treatment in East Africa using phytofiltration. Their Phytofix technology consists of several interlocking flotation lattices containing specially bred Typha plants that help break down contaminants such as BOD5, COD, and TSS from the water. This system faced challenges with the latties sinking and the interlattice ball joints frequently disconnecting.
Our team focused on designing buoyancy and connectivity accessories to mitigate the issues and increase the effectiveness and reliability of Phytofix. Through rapid prototyping, testing, and weekly partner meetings, we progressed through several design iterations to ensure our accessory proposals met design specifications, were technically feasible, benefitted installation time, were easy to install, and reduced overall cost.
In particular, I focused on the design, prototyping, and testing of the flotation cup as well as conducted plant buoyancy analysis to ensure our testing methods well replicated the real system.
Thorough documentation of the accessory design and testing can be found at the following files:
Figure 1: Final flotation cup (left) and x-onnect (right) accessory designs.
Figure 2: Omiflo’s Phytofix lattice design
Figure 3: Flotation cup design for injection molding
Figure 4: Flotation cup engineering drawing
Figure 5: Buoyancy test setup up at MIT Sea Grant to measure performance of flotation cups with 4-lattice system under load.
Figure 6: Omiflo’s onsite testing of the flotation cups showed promising results. The lattice system without accessories (left) was 4 inches below water, while the same system with flotation cups successfully rose to the water surface.
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