Hello,

In this blog, I would like to express the progress so far on the control system of suction pump which we are building.

On this fifth week of our internship, we are still trying to build the control system circuit of a suction pump which will control the overflow of the fluids into the machine. Two ways of doing it has been proposed, like the use of  infrared optical sensors and level sensors. As of now we are building two circuits, one for infrared optical sensor and the other for level sensor. The purpose of doing it is to choose the one with high performance.

One of the trial circuits for the infrared sensor

On other part of this project, we are in the process of brainstorming the designs where we can put our sensors on the suction pump. We have not chosen one yet because it will depend on the type sensors to be used. On Tuesday, I and Christina went to PAM (Physical Asset Management at Queen Elisabeth central hospital) to see if our designs will work on existing suction pumps.

Cape maclear

It was a wonderful weekend well spent at the cape maclear. Cape maclear is one of the beautiful beaches of lake Malawi.

Bye…

hello…..

SUCTION PUMP

first of all i would like to introduce to you the project we are working on.We are working on a suction pump. A suction pump is a pump as its name suggests that sucks any fluids from patients. On this project, we are eliminating the common problem which most suction pump encounter in the hospitals here in Malawi.The problem is that when the collection bottle is full the fluids start going to the machine (pump) which result in damaging the motor.

So we found solutions to this problem by coming up with control systems to monitor the level of the fluid in the collecting bottle. The first solution is to come up with an alarm to alert the nurses when the collecting bottle is three quarter full. The second solution is an optical sensor which will sense the fluid in the collecting bottle when full to switch off the  suction pump. As of now we are through with project research,hopefully this week we are going to build circuits for control systems.

CALIBRATION OF PHOTOTHEREPY DOSING METER

We did also the calibration of our phototherapy dosing meter using the commercial standard Olympus billimeter meter with the aid of matrix laboratory software.

JACARANDA ORPHANAGE SCHOOL

We went  also to jacaranda orphanage school where we did showcase the phototherapy dosing meter to the students as the part of encouraging the students to work hard in science subjects. I was very excited to see the way students were interested with our visit.

Lastly, i would like to encourage you all to look forward for this project.