Hello lovely readers and welcome back to the final installment of EvapoGATOR’s blog before we take a week off for Spring Break!

The past week has been pretty busy with all the assignments/projects/exams our professors are trying to squeeze in before break on top of the continued assembly we’ve been doing in the FSHN pilot plant. It has been a hectic week, but we’ve been sure to prioritize lab time and assembly.

With that being said, here are some tasks our team accomplished this week:

• finished attaching the main process units (evaporator, condenser, and phase separator tank) to the stainless steel frame
• continued assembly of piping, tri-clover and NPT connections, gauges, and valves
• repurposed a mesh steel tray in the pilot plant to use as a tray at the bottom of the frame for the Buchner flask to sit under the condenser
• updated the BOM/Purchasing Sheet by taking inventory of additional purchased/received components
• identified problems where parts/assemblies were misaligned and constructed a plan to fix those problems

As the last bullet point states, one of the snags we ran into this week was that there are a few parts of the system that are misaligned. Our team used STL files from McMaster-Carr to construct the CAD model, but not all parts were purchased from this company for various reasons; therefore, not all dimensions are exact. While the Solidworks model lines every assembly up correctly, we learned this week that it was very unlikely all of our parts would align perfectly in real life. This is a risk we should have foreseen but overlooked.

The good news is that we spent enough time in the lab this week to create some plans for fixing these alignment issues. First, we are going to use an acetal copolymer rod to cut to size as a spacer in between the heat exchangers (HEXs) and frame, so the centers of the HEXs line up with the center of the phase separator tank. Hopefully this will fix many issues we have with alignment.

If there are additional issues, we plan to either drill more holes into the stainless steel frame or into the stainless steel plate behind the phase separator tank to help with alignment in the x-direction. We can also move the HEXs up/down by varying amounts so they line up better with assemblies attaching to the phase separator tank.

That’s about it for our progress this week! As a reminder, next week is Spring Break so EvapoGATOR will all be soaking up the sun and getting some much-needed rest and relaxation so we can come back ready to finish this project! When we return, our team plans to implement our solutions to the alignment problems, finish assembling the system, and begin some testing. Additionally, we will be preparing for Prototype Inspection Day (PID) on 3/28 where we show our current prototype and receive feedback from judges, then our final presentation will be the Final Design Review (FDR) on 4/25.

Now please enjoy lots of pictures from the FSHN pilot plant, which is where we lived this week. Have a great Spring Break, everyone!