Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers (한국농공학회논문집)

The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers (한국농공학회)
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Experimental Study on the Effect of Air Chamber Size and Operation Parameters on the Performance of a Hydraulic Ram Pump

압력실의 크기와 운전 조건에 따른 수격펌프의 성능에 대한 실험적 고찰

  • Received : 2019.04.02
  • Accepted : 2019.06.24
  • Published : 2019.07.31
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Abstract

Motor pumps cannot be used in those areas where electricity is not accessible such as remote rural areas in many African countries. Hydraulic ram pump is one of the solutions for supplying water for irrigation or domestic uses. The hydraulic ram pumps are working based on the water hammer effect for pumping without external power or electricity. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of air chamber volume and operation parameters on the performance of the hydraulic ram pump which was assembled with common plumbing parts. The experimental results showed the volume of the air chamber did not affect the performance such as discharge rate and head. When drive heights were 1.7 and 2.35 m, the maximum discharge heads were up to 7 m and 10 m, respectively. When the air chamber volume was 1 L, discharge rates were 0.23 and 2.12 L/min under the drive heights of 1.7 and 2.35 m, respectively. The average energy efficiency of the hydraulic ram pump assembled in this study was about 60% for all the experimental conditions.

Keywords

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Fig. 1 Schematic of hydraulic ram pump operation

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Fig. 2 Components of hydraulic ram pump

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Fig. 3 Hydraulic ram pump assembled for the experiments

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Fig. 4 Fabricated air chambers with different volumes

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Fig. 5 The ratio of water delivered over the total water discharged from the tank

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Fig. 6 Power efficiencies for different chamber volumes and delivery height at drive height at 2.35 m

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Fig. 7 Efficiency and flow rates at drive height at 1.7 m and delivery height at 3 m

Table 1 Experimental conditions

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Table 2 Maximum pressure observed under different drive heights

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Table 3 Comparison of the ratio of waste over total drive flow for different volumes of air chamber (Drive height at 2.35 m)

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Table 4 Flow rates of delivered and waste discharge for different chamber volume sizes and delivery heights

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Table 5 Power efficiencies for different volumes of air chamber at drive height of 2.35 m

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References

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