Pump as Turbine (PAT) Design in Water Distribution Network by System Effectiveness

Abstract

Water distribution networks face several problems related to leakages, where the pressure control strategy is a common practice for water loss management. Small-scale hydropower schemes, where pumps as turbines replace pressure reducing valves, can be considered an interesting technical solution, which ensures both economic convenience and system flexibility. Due to the water networks' variable operating conditions, a new methodology to model the effectiveness of pumps as turbines was developed based on the efficiency and the mechanical reliability of the hydropower device and the flexibility of the plant. System effectiveness is proposed as the objective function in the optimization procedure and applied to a real system, enabling one to emphasize that the hydraulic regulation mode of the plant is better than the electric regulation mode for American Petroleum Industry (API) manufacturing standards of pumps.

Huella energética del agua en función de los patrones de consumo en redes de distribución

“…A estos objetivos, se puede sumar la recuperación energética de la energía disipada por las válvulas reguladoras de presión mediante la instalación de sistemas de recuperación energética (p.e. bombas trabajando como turbinas) (Carravetta et al, 2014(Carravetta et al, , 2013a(Carravetta et al, , 2013bRamos y Borga, 1999). El desarrollo de estos últimos sistemas permiten generar energía renovable sostenible (McNabola et al, 2014;Ramos et al, 2010), reduciendo la huella energética en la distribución del ciclo del agua, bien como indicador ecológico directo en el uso del agua o bien como indicador indirecto en la producción de procesos industriales o producción agrícola (Vanham y Bidoglio, 2013).…”

Energy Saving in a Water Supply Network by Coupling a Pump and a Pump As Turbine (PAT) in a Turbopump

“…Other studies propose different solutions for the regulation of the PAT plant to address the large variability of hydraulic characteristics and to match the turbine head and discharge with the needs of the network. Carravetta et al [37] propose regulating the PAT either by a hydraulic or electric regulation system. In the former case, two hydraulic valves are placed in a series-parallel circuit to dissipate the excess head when the turbine head is too low or bypasses a part of the discharge when the flow rate is high.…”

Comparison of Pumping Regimes for Water Distribution Systems to Minimize Cost and Greenhouse Gases

“…GHG emissions, based on energy use or simply energy use itself can be used as environmental impact objectives (Simpson 2009). Water quality can be addressed by minimizing water age, which can be obtained from EPANET (Stokes et al 2012a); pump maintenance cost, represented by pump switches, could be formulated as an objective (López-Ibáñez et al 2005) or as a constraint (Lansey & Awumah 1994); system effectiveness (Carravetta et al 2013a), resilience (Prasad & Park 2003) and leak reduction (Giustolisi et al 2015) can also be used as objectives to improve the performance of WDSs.…”