Flow Control Gate to Increase Irrigation, Water Quality Treatment, and Detention Efficiency

The proposed device is a headgate that discharges water at a constant flow despite a variable headwater depth. This is possible due to a carefully designed adaptable float and track system. Through the funding of this grant the research could help greatly lower costs increase efficiency and decrease the size of water treatment systems irrigation systems and detention ponds. The innovation is already patented and initial research started in the form of digitally designing the gate and then testing a rough prototype of it in order to verify the calculations. During the period of this grant modeling would be done applying this design to models of multiple different detention basins in the area to determine effectiveness of the gate in a real application and to give us information on different sizes of gates and floats which will need to be implemented based on the varying specifications of each system. This should set us up to be able to create multiple prototypes during Phase II and test them in the basins to which they are already catered. This research may also help further develop future water quality and management systems technologies. Commercially Colorado has a high demand for both stormwater and irrigation technologies and this device would especially be helpful to rural areas where developers are often discouraged by the combination of federal stormwater requirements and the high cost of implementation.