Investigation of the efficiency of ram pumps with the volume of the pressure chamber

Abstract

The hydraulic ram pump transfers the energy of a falling water flow to a fraction of the original water flow and there by taking it to a higher elevation without the use of an external energy input such as fossil fuel and electricity. Some percentage (>50%) of input water has to be wasted and that percentage value depends on several parameters such as the input head, output head, diameter of input and output pipes, diameter of the waste valve and the delivery valve and the volume of the pressure chamber. Today energy consumption is increased and hence, the energy crisis is a burning problem for almost all of the people living in the world. Therefore, this energy free pump is a timely needed solution for the energy crisis. The aim of this project is to investigate the efficiency of hydraulic ram pumps with the volume of the pressure chamber. We analyzed the volume of the pressure chamber which, directly effect to the pumping rate, keeping other parameters constant. We designed a volume variable pressure chamber and pumping rate was measured with different volume of the pressure chamber. The experimental results showed that the efficiency of the designed ram pump is 27.6 % when the volume of the pressure chamber gets its critical volume. The experimental results showed that the physical dimensions of the pressure chamber does not effect to the efficiency of the ram pump. Around the critical volume of the pressure chamber, the shape of the graph of time (t) for pumping a desired volume Vs the volume(v) of the pressure chamber is well fitted to a quadratic polynomial (t = av2 + bv + c) with a minimum.