Mechanical Design - Bottom Pump Interface

The next step after designing the spectroscopy and filtering chambers was to conceive a design for the pump interface, which would extract the filtered water from the contraption and send it back into the water body. Below is a rendering of this design:


The mesh filter would be secured with screws on the offset extrusion, mid-plane within the lower compartment (as seen in the drawing). Water would then fill up the bottom of this compartment, and a pump (located in the top compartment), would pump the water out towards the open water body (depicted by the hole on the outer round shell). This piece would be connected under the entire contraption, allowing for seamless water flow from the spectroscopy chamber and back into the water body. With the filter being placed on the inner offset extrusion, the microplastics would pile up on top of this filter. Once the filter is unable to hold any more microplastics, this bottom housing could simply be removed to clean the filter for re-use within the water body.

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