[Exports_project_office] EXPORTS: RIDE underway system update

[Norm Nelson]

Hello EXPORTS survey underway team leaders, 

I got a surprise message from Matt Durham yesterday late afternoon saying that they’d finished plumbing the new underway lines through the labs and had made a couple of four-place 3/4” manifolds to distribute the water (see pictures). I immediately asked a few questions about the setup to anticipate your questions and concerns, and had a very productive back-and-forth with Matt and Emily (currently at sea working on this). This is what I’ve learned and suggested so far: 

- From the (stainless) pipe run that leads up to the main lab from the pump and the sea chest is a Hi-Tech Duravent 1.5” reinforced clear polyurethane tube (visible in the pictures) with a tee that delivers water to the wet lab. It runs overhead in the main lab from the flange fitting near the floor center aft that we saw last month. I’ve asked Emily, the restech on board now who is working with this setup, to find a way to darken the tube so that the phytoplankton going through the lab aren’t light stressed. She’s going to use duct tape at this point. 

- The tubes terminate in elbows with 1.5” FPT screw fittings. These currently contain reducing bushings that have the manifolds screwed in to them. These can all be removed. Emily has offered to replace the 90 degree elbows with 45 degree fittings to reduce the cornering shear and I’m inclined to ask her to do that. 

I am thinking that we probably want to remove the manifolds and put in our own fittings to reduce the right-angle shear through the small pipes that we get with the manifolds (or tap into the flow before the manifolds for the sensors that care about shear. 
 
Please let me know what you think, and any questions you have. Sooner the better. I’m going to jump ahead and ask Emily to replace those elbows at the ends of the tubes with the 45 degree elbows to start. 

Also feel free to include your seagoing people on this conversation if you like. 
Cheers, Norm

Norm Nelson
Earth Research Institute
MC 3060
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA
norm at eri.ucsb.edu
Vox: +1-805-893-3202
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