Ram Pump
The Ram Pump team has designed, constructed, and began testing a small-scale hydraulic ram pump during the spring of 2013. The team focused on obtaining a flow rate of 70 mL/s (equivalent to filling a 750 L chemical stock tank in three hours) and pumping the water up a vertical height of 7.0 meters. Our goal is to optimize and modify the current ram pump for implementation in a water treatment plant in Honduras during the winter of 2014.
The ram pump that is designed in the lab is electricity free and only uses gravity and hydraulic principles. The 'water hammer effect,' or the surge in pressure of the water due to the closing of the waste valve, is used in the ram pump to move the water. The ram pump will be placed below the water treatment plant and will use the momentum of the incoming water to drive the water to the chemical stock tanks and the restrooms located above the plant.
Current & Future Research
A modular prototype of a ram pump has been designed for data collection and ease of testing design alternatives. The pump has been installed in a hydraulic testing facility and initial testing has been done to determine ram pump efficiency at various drive flow rates and delivery heads. Ram pump design parameters, specifically check valve weight, check valve type, and air chamber size, need to be tested to determine their effects on ram pump efficiency. Using data collected from these experiments, our pump design and construction methods will be evaluated and optimized for implementation in an AguaClara plant.
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