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.
As of Fall 2013, the ram pump team conducted thorough research and collected significant data to improve the delivery flow rate. Before data was collected, our team constructed a head loss system consisting of twenty 1m vertical tubes connected to each other with 1m horizontal tubes. The head loss system provided the team with a measure of the vertical height that the water is being pumped to. Using easy data, the head loss was collected for each trial and could be easily changed by reducing the size of the head loss system. The previous summer’s ram pump, which is the AguaClara model number one, was optimized by changing the weights and springs and weights of the waste valve, changing the check valve to a spring valve, and changing the size of the drive pipe. However, the maximum flow rate that was obtained was 18 mL/s, significantly smaller than the flow rate needed for the water treatment plant in Honduras.
To improve our delivery flow rate, the team decided to analyze a commercial ram pump. A RIFE Davey Ram Pump was purchased and set into the system to see how the current AguaClara model could be improved. After conducting various trials, the team found that the location of the components of the ram pump with respect to one another significantly increased the delivery flow rate as the commercial ram pump obtained a flow rate of 26 mL/s. The team took these findings and created the AguaClara model two, which has the waste valve placed at the end of the setup, instead of at the beginning. Now, the water will flow through the drive pipe, be stopped by the waste valve, and the pressure serge created, the ‘water hammer effect,’ will push the water through the check valve and into the air chamber. From the air chamber, the water is pushed back down, but the check valve is now closed so the water is forced out to the delivery system. After conducting one trial with the AguaClara model two, the team found that the new setup created a tremendous increase in flow rate, as a value of 28 mL/s was reached.
Further research: After a semester of experimentation, the team has identified the appropriate direction in which to proceed. It is now clear that the new ram pump should take on a more compact form, in which all components (waste valve, check valve, air chamber) should be all closer and more directly connected to one another. The team has created a new preliminary setup, taking into account the aforementioned considerations. In the first run the new setup demonstrated impressive results suggesting that the recommended path proved to be correct. However, further documentation of the setup is needed since barely one trial was taken. Of course the setup can be continued to be improved by implementing more of the outlined considerations, such as the dual tubing in the air chamber or properly securing all components, but in no way limited to these.
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