Development of a Mobile Reactor for Large Scale Water Treatment

Abstract: Water pollution is one of many environmental problems that currently exists and inadequate treatment of industrial wastewater is contributing to further pollution. SpinChem AB's Rotating Bed Reactor (RBR) technology offers the possibility of water treatment by carrying out reactions between a solution and a solid phase. To move further in the field of large scale water treatment, SpinChem AB developed a prototype of a mobile reactor, i.e. a raft, carrying the RBR technology. The prototype proved that a mobile reactor can greatly reduce the process time for larger water volumes compared to a stationary RBR. The aim of this thesis is to develop the next version of the mobile reactor, with increased operational stability and autonomous driving (autopilot) as main goals. This work covers all parts in the development of the new mobile reactor which involves design, simulation, construction, electronics, software implementations and testing. The presented mobile reactor is a twin hull surface vehicle with the possibility of using two RBRs for water treatment. The steering is based on differential motor thrust and the autonomous driving was achieved using sensor data from a GPS, magnetometer and accelerometer, together with a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) type control system. The autopilot was put to the test on two different travel routes with a P and PI controller. The mobile reactor successfully followed the given routes, thus verifying that the developed mobile reactor can be used for future autonomous large scale water treatment.