Desal Prize, High School Project
System
The system's design had a media filled bed. We figured an ebb and flow system will be most suitable so that it can mimic the plant’s actual environment (picture on the left).However, with our intended plant, Salicornia Europea, the time it would take to germinate would be over the amount of time we had before the competition. With that, we decided to use spinach as an alternative since spinach can survive in waters with high salinty levels. Again, however, when we were in the process of germination, the spinach didn't seem to be ready to be put into the plant bed, so we decided to host this experiment in a separate environment to see if they can grow in brackish water. Now going back to the actual system, the water from the Big Tank will pump from the tank and to PVC pipe by a PVC adapter. A PVC valve will help release water into the plant bed which will be drained by a bell siphon (picture in the middle). The water will then drain into a reservoir tank (picture on the right), which was where we implemented the chemicals so there was a quick gradual acclamation that would allow the fish to adapt to the salts. Then the water from the reservoir would pump back into the fish tank.
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Experiment
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Once after the tilapia were settled in the Big Tank, two fish were selected to be the subjects in our experiment. The fish were hosted in a separate environment (pictured above), with its own air stone and heater, that looks similar to the big tank environment. The main difference is that the experiment allowed us to prove if the fish can adapt to a gradual acclamation of the brine concentrate. This part of the project was only present in Phase 2 as it helped organize the data and was a very important part of the project. |