Tuesday - Field Visits

On Tuesday, we went out on a field visit to the pumping station that Cindy and I are working with. It is approximately 5 miles from where we work. As we left the ACP compound, we saw a cruise ship going through the Miraflores Locks.

This is a cruise ship headed Northbound through the Miraflores Locks. 

 This is a HUGE ship, also headed Northbound, going through the Pedro Miguel Locks. This particular ship is an automobile carrier. 

 This is an electrical station in Paraiso. Paraiso is a little village that used to be home to Canal workers inside the Canal Zone during canal construction and during its virgin years of operation. It is located a couple of hundred meters north of the Pedro Miguel locks.

Rocking my ACP hard hat on our field visit. 

 Remember that cruise ship going through the Miraflores Locks? About 45 minutes later, here it is emerging through the Pedro Miguel locks as it continues its journeys.

 ACP Tugboat going to collect the cruise ship and guide it through the Guillard Cut. 

 These got out of order... But here is that MASSIVE automobile carrying ship. Urho said that this ship is the absolute largest ship that the canal can currently handle. It depends slightly on the water level in the Canal (based on rain), but he estimates that this ship is within a couple of feet from the canal bottom. The picture really doesn't explain HOW HUGE this ship is and how amazing it is to see it travel through the canal.

 Here, you can see ALMOST the whole ship, so you get a better idea of how huge it is. The roof to the left is a pumping station that is about the size of Tim and Karen's house (as a reference point for mom and dad... couldn't think of something of similar size that everyone else could refer to... sorry!) It is also about 20 feet from the shore line.

 This is the Pilot boat. If you look closely, you can see someone climbing up the ladder!

 Again, as reference, if you have ever seen a tug boat, here is one at the back of the ship, trying to guide it through the narrowest channel in the canal. The ramp on the huge ship is used to load and unload the automobiles that the ship carries.

 Cool bird sitting on the pump station :) The pump station is one of the focal points of Cindy and I's project.

 Here is the close-up of the bird, with his wings more outstretched. 

 This is the logo for the Panama Canal Authority.

 Here comes a big container ship through the Pedro Miguel locks. To keep you up-to-date, we are at the Paraiso Raw Water Pumping Station to take a tour so that Cindy and I could have some visual aids to help us understand more about our project. We were supposed to be meeting the plant manager at about 8:45 for the tour. Nobody showed up until 9:30, so that is why I got to take so many cool pictures of ships coming through the canal and passing by us.

 It started to rain, so we took shelter in our truck. These are my AMAZINGLY awesome work boots that I got over the summer for my internship. They are super heavy but ridiculously comfortable :)

 We are working on a project about the raw water that is pumped out of the canal and then sent to a water treatment facility. These are two lines (30", cast iron) that carry raw water from this pumping station and deliver them to different locations. We are interested in the one on the right hand side.

 At the edge of the PANAMA CANAL. NO BIG DEAL (Sorry... civil/environmental engineer totally nerding out...)

 These are four of the pipes that draw water from the canal. Pretty cool!

 In the mean time, here comes that container ship that I posted a picture of a little while ago!

 BAM! Inside the pumping station! These are two of the five vertical pumps that are inside this particular pumping station. They are very loud. Some of the noises they are supposed to make, but Urho pointed out the different types of noises and explained what each one was. There was one particular sound that was the sound of inefficiency in the system due to poor design. I will show a picture of that a little bit further on. Stay Tuned!

 These are the other three vertical pumps.

 This pipe is what carries the water after it has been drawn from the canal and passes through the pumps. This pipe becomes the cast iron pipe that I showed on the outside of the building. We will be working on determining the carrying capacity of this pipe.

 This valve controls flow between the different pipes and is used to accommodate changing water demands.

As you can see, this is pump number 2 :P 

 AHA! Quiz time! Who remembers when I was talking about noise? Here it is. Can anyone guess what is going on? If you look closely, right before the joint, the gray pipe tapers slightly. This is suppose to increase the pressure in the pipe as it approaches the pump. Urho explained that this is actually counter productive as the pump can provide the energy needed to draw the water. The extra noise we were hearing inside the pump station is because of this inefficiency in the system. 

 AH! Moments too late. I wanted to take a picture of the container ship going by the door. Well... here is its back end and the tug boat along with it.

 Urho is explaining the different instruments.

 These charts track the demand in each line. He didn't really explain how persay... just that that is what they do. They keep all these pieces of paper (discs) to track history.

 Here are the charts for the North and the South line.

 These show the discharge from each pump (on the left). You can see that Pump 5 is really the only pump that is running. The others have some water passing through them, but nothing significant. The top two on the right show the pressure within the North and South pipeline. 

 Uh oh! Some water is escaping!

 It took me about 15 times to get this in a picture. There is a LARGE pipe that is the fifth pipe which draws water up from the canal. This is the pipe. It is underneath a grate, so it took a bunch of efforts to see the pipe through the grate...

 Here are the Pedro Miguel locks. No ship going through at the moment.

 One of the engines of the Panama Canal Railway. 

 Here is another container ship, approaching the Pedro Miguel locks. We are driving south, this ship is headed north. After our visit at the Paraiso Pumping Station, we headed to the Miraflores Potable Water Plant. This is where they treat the raw water that is pumping from Paraiso before it is sold to the water district so that it can be distributed to the country for consumption.

 This is the chlorine storage shed at the water treatment plant.

 This is the first step of the water treatment process. This is the aeration phase.

 Close up view of one of the sprayers.

 This is the input from that pipe that we saw at Paraiso.

 I just like this one.

 Flocculation/Settlement tanks

 Me! It was about 98 outside and very sunny, hence the red cheeks and the shut eyes.

 Chlorine additive

 :D yay water droplet images

 This is a filtration basin. There are 3 layers of media that the water passes down through. After this phase, the water is considered potable.

 Underneath the treatment facility.

 Urho explaining that when the water leaves that pipe right there, it is sent to a distribution pumping station and is sent out to the community.

 Here, we are looking down at the Upper lock of the Miraflores Lock system. Here is an oil tanker passing through.

 A slightly nicer picture of me

 A diagram of the Miraflores Plant

Here is another massive automobile carrying ship, approaching the Miraflores locks. 

The rest of the day at work was rather boring. When we got home, we decided to order Papa John's for dinner because we didn't have any food in the apartment and didn't have time to go grocery shopping. Papa John's is WAY better in Panama :D

At 7:30, we were picked up by Alejandro, a WPI alum who graduated in 2009. He brought us to a German bar where we met up with Olga, another 2009 WPI alum, and Lorey. We had drinks and talked about what there was to do in Panama and reminisced with them about WPI. It was a very good night :)