During our course of our 1st prototype run, we had begun to notice the flaws in the material and the job done on the prototype. This eventually led to undesired consequences and interruptions within the 20 day run.
Fig 1: Burnt front section of the prototype
Fig 2: Close up view of the burnt prototype
Fig 3: Melted tube that valve was connected to.
From our observation, it would seem that the tube that the valve was connected to was not of the appropriate material, hence it could not withstand the high temperature and as a result, melted.
Fig 4: Another view of the melted, burnt section of the tube.
As seen from the picture, there are the melted remnants of the plastic. The black colour however is the result of the glass silicone used to prevent leakage in the aerobic stage.
The melted pipe had caused major leakage of the samples, leading to a partial failure of the aerobic stage. However, we made do with the remaining sample that was still present in the chamber for sampling tests to be carried out on.
From this experience, we realised that the material used was unsuitable due to the multiple leakages that are not only hard to identify, but also hard to repair. This makes it very troublesome for the experimental run and also ended up messing up the entire area. Therefore, we decided to quickly reconstruct the prototype using a different material which is metal. Since metal uses welding, and is able withstand high temperatures, therefore we would have less problems. The update on the new prototype will be present in a different post.
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