Koru1000 Pressure Control Application
There is a distribution network for drinking water in the infrastructure of a city to meet the water demand of the residents. The water brought from the water source such as dams, lakes or underground water source is delivered to the network pipelines through the conductance pipes. The depiction of the water circulation is given in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Water circulation
City water networks are supposed to serve for many years in order to pay off for the installation cost which is pretty expensive. The Ministry of Forestry declared that the seepage losses in Turkey are, in average, about 50-55% [1]. Ideally, the ratio is expected to be around 20-25%. As it is not possible due to the expensive cost to renew the whole water network, the seepage losses are tried to be minimized by installing pressure control valves in various different places.
The amount of the consumption of water is different when day and night hours are compared. This difference causes instantaneous rises and falls in the pressure of the network pipelines. In order to deliver the water to the user at a fixed rate, the desired pressure in the pipelines are expected to be between 3.5 and 4 bars. But due to the variation in the water demand, the pressure falls to the vicinity of 2-2.5 bars when water consumption is higher, and it rises to 10 bars when water consumption is lower. Such a variation results in inescapable seepage losses due to some possible reasons such as the deformation that happens in the pipeline connection points. The seepage losses show a logarithmic variance , over the time course of the over-consumption and under-consumption times. For example, at the connection point of a worn-out pipeline, the seepage losses are 5 and 50 m³/h respectively in the overconsumption and underconsumption times.
Figure 2. Koru1000 Pressure Control Center and the main control screen
According to the data obtained by Koru1000 Pressure Control Center Application R&D Department, the water that flows through the pipeline during day is around 300-330 m³/h and it is around 15-40 m³/h between 01.00-05.00. If the previous amount of water that used to flow through the pipeline during nighttime before the installation of Koru1000 Pressure control system is taken into account, which is 100-150 m³/h, it is easily noticed that a serious amount of saving is achieved. Koru1000 Pressure Control Center and the main control screen is given in Figure 2 and the variance of the waterflow for a period of 8 days is given in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Variance of the waterflow for a period of 8 days
With the pressure control center application, the input pressure which is around 6-6.5 bars is reduced to 4-4.5 bars during the overconsumption hours and it is reduced to 2-2.5 bars during the underconsumption hours in order to deliver the water to the consumers. Most of the seepage losses have been eliminated by this adjustment. In Figure 4, the pressure of the pipeline is given during the day and night time. The input pressure (in red) is around 6.5 bars and it shows an almost constant behaviour and the exit pressure (in Blue) changes from 2.5 bars to 4.5 bars.
System;
The system allows the output pressure to be adjusted both manually and depending on the time.
It also adjusts the pressure dynamically by putting the tap pressure of even the furthest places from the control center.
Figure 4. The change in the line pressure over the cours of 5 days
The damage caused by the loss of water to both the natural sources and the national economy, as a result of deformation in the pipelines over time, should not be looked over. The seepage losses in the distribution network cause damages in two ways:
The price of getting water from underground is a costly process and the seepage losses result this expenses go to waste
The water that is lost goes directly into sewers and this means wasting the national treasury and natural sources.
The pressure control room developed in corporated with KASKI has reduced the losses for a considerable amount. We thank KASKI for this valuable collaboration.
Kaynaklar:
[1] https://www.isu.gov.tr/haberler/detay.aspx?Id=4043