Grantee Research Project Results
AguaClara's Ram Pump for Zero Electricity Drinking Water Treatment
EPA Grant Number: SV840017Title: AguaClara's Ram Pump for Zero Electricity Drinking Water Treatment
Investigators: Cowen, Todd
Institution: Cornell University
EPA Project Officer: Aja, Hayley
Phase: II
Project Period: August 1, 2020 through July 31, 2022 (Extended to July 31, 2023)
Project Amount: $75,000
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet - Phase 2 (2019) Recipients Lists
Research Category: P3 Awards
Objective:
The goal of this projectis to research, invent, and design an inline ram pump that can be used to deliver water to prepare chemical stocks at drinking water treatment plants. The pump will extract potential energy from the purified water that is leaving the water treatment plan and use that energy to lift purified water to the chemical stock tanks that are at the highest elevation inside the water treatment plant. This will enable AguaClara water treatment plants to continue to operate without depending on electricity and will eliminate the need for plant operators to carry water within the water treatment plant.
Researchers will test the following hypotheses.
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- The pump efficiency can be increased by increasing the diameter of the check valve on the high pressure side of the pump.
- The pump can be tuned using external spring tensioning that can be mounted in the filtered water tank.
- A snifter valve can be located upstream of the high pressure check valve to inject a small amount of air and keep the air chamber filled with air.
Approach:
The experimental approach will be to test different versions of the pump in our laboratory hydraulic test stand. We will use ProCoDAsoftware to measure the flow produced by the pump at a range of pressures. ProCoDA will use a Proportional Integral Derivative feedback system to provide a constant pressure on the high pressure side of the ram pump. The pumping efficiencies will be compared with theoretical predictions that are computed based on a ram pump model that the team has developed.
The team also benefits from customer feedback. The team demonstrated the first version of the externally tunable pump to plant operators in Honduras in January of 2020. The next versions of the design will be demonstrated and evaluated by customers to ensure that the pump is easy to install, operate, and maintain.
Expected Results:
The expected outcome is an open source zero-waste ram pump design that can be built using generic parts with minimal modifications. The pump will be installed in many of the 20 AguaClara plants in Central América as well as in new AguaClara plants that will be built in the coming years. The ram pumps will significantly reduce the manual labor required to operate an AguaClara water treatment plant and increase the pride and satisfaction of the plant operators. The ram pump is an important part of the overarching goal of developing a new generation of water treatment technologies that are environmentally friendly, easy for communities to operate reliably, and hence sustainably provide safe water on tap.
Supplemental Keywords:
drinking water treatment technologies, safe water on tap, sustainable infrastructure design, open source engineeringProgress and Final Reports:
P3 Phase I:
AguaClara's Ram Pump for Zero Electricity Drinking Water Treatment | Final ReportThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.