team photo

Figure 1
project photo

Figure 2
project photo


Team 10

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Luqi Zhang
Yajing Zhao
Ronghui You

Dr. Mu-Ping Nieh

Sponsor

UConn School of Engineering

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Designing Epoxy Potting of Caps for Capillary Filtration

Water is an absolute necessity for all species that live on the earth because water is very important for the human body since all cells, organs, and tissues use water to help with temperature regulation and keep our bodies under-hydration to maintain bodily functions. However, increased pollution, climate change, and a rapidly growing population have threatened the pure water supply. As a result, the demand for water filtration keeps increasing. Our team designed and built a water filtration system called capillary filtration in 3D modeling software. The polluted water will pass through the bundle of porous capillaries and a housing shell will collect the filtered water. We applied epoxy at the two end caps to keep all the capillaries stay in a bundle. The process of epoxy potting is an exothermic reaction that induces thermal stress and breaks the capillaries when the temperature is above a certain ceiling temperature. This will cause the failure of the water filtration device. We simulated the temperature profile in the reactor cap as a function of curing time by applying some equations. This design could be a valuable advancement for water filtration which can reduce the impact of polluted water on humans and the environment. It is also environmentally friendly because we choose the epoxy that is biodegradable so that it will not behave like plastic which will exist for a long time. The water filtration industries can manufacture this design for large-scale production.