Water Distribution

Dear,

I want to control a VFD pumping station for distributing water to a network, usually this is done by using a pressure transmitter (located at the discharge of the pumps) for controlling the speed of the pumps and accordingly distribute the required demand to a water network.
I want to check if this is acceptable and moreover, my concern is what about if leakage happen in the network. what is usually done?

thank you!

charbel

I am going to assume that this is a booster station and not a pump used to fill a reservoir. The control strategy you describe is commonly employed for this application.

Leaks are a constant in most water systems - the average US utility loses one quarter or more of the supplied water to leaks. Unless this is a very small system you just keep pumping.

You can check for Low Discharge Pressure, Low Pressure At Full Speed (pump), these will indicate line breaks. You can also check for Pump High Runtime.

If I understand well the question, you must create a minimum pressure limit on the network, reading an analog input of pressure sensor, and operate the frequency inverters with a PID output.

Tark said how to detect it:

Tark said:

You can check for Low Discharge Pressure, Low Pressure At Full Speed (pump), these will indicate line breaks. You can also check for Pump High Runtime.

Click to expand...

But be careful. In our distribution systems it is not allowed to stop the pumps when this happenes because opening 1 or 2 fire hydrants causes the same effect on small/medium networks and you don't want to automatically shut down the water when there is a fire...

So it is an alarm, but no shutdown.