A laboratory facility for flocculation-related experiments

This report describes the design and functions of a new experimental facility built in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney used for the investigation of flocculation-related processes. This facility was uniquely designed to replicate physical (hydrodynamic processes and sediment load), chemical (nutrients and contaminants) and biological (micro-organisms) processes in natural aqueous environment; hence, it allows for investigating the effects of these processes on the flocculation dynamics of suspended particle matter (SPM) through a fully controllable laboratory-based research. It consists of five major components, including a smallscale settling column, a turbulence generating system, a water quality mea-suring system, a μPIV system, and a micro-controlling system. Measurements, either imaging data of settling SPM or water quality readings, can be acquired automatically with any ar-bitrary scheduling. The innovation of this facility is the integration of physical, chemical and biological aquatic processes into one framework to explore the complexity of the interactions be-tween these processes and SPM dynamics. One of its major contributions to the advancement in sediment dynamics studies is the direct detection of possible repercussions the increased anthropogenic stresses has on the microbial population and the aggregation kinematics and statistics of suspended particles in aqueous ecosystem. Ultimately, this facility is expected to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of how all possible interactions in natural water bodies affect each other and consequently, how these interactions affect SPM flocculation and transport.