Behind the settling columns lighting was installed to accentuate the water/mud interface. The water/mud interface was monitored by taking pictures at variable time intervals. Based on the contrast between the water layer and the mud, the interface level was automatically determined using the standard "straight edge detection" algorithm available in LabView. The output of this, are the CSV files containing the evolution of the interface level over time, expressed in pixels. These values are converted to mm and further processed to generate the settling curves.

Various mud settling experiments were conducted during this research. The variable between the different experiments is the procedure (technique and duration) for conditioning of the mud. Four different techniques were applied. Durations varied from 15 to 60 minutes in steps of 15 minutes. During the experiments the level of the water/mud interface was monitored over a week. These datasets contain these time series of each settling experiment.