Grantee Research Project Results
2021 Progress Report: 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 Period Covered by this Report: July 1, 2020 through June 30,2021
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 fundamental purpose of the ram pump is to relieve the burden of labor on the plant operators who are currently manually filling buckets of filtered water to deliver to AguaClara Plant’s chemical stock tank. The ram pump, in turn, will automatically pump this water into the chemical stock tanks and become integrated into the plant's functionality. Our research during the past year supports this end-goal and the mission of AguaClara in general.
Progress Summary:
During the performance period work focused on experimental efforts to improve theoretical models to predict flow rate generated by the Cornell AguaClara Ram Pump system developed in previous years by the AguaClara program. Our goal was to produce a more accurate theoretical framework for evaluation of the system and use this framework for future improvements in development of our prototype ram pump. We carried out three sets of experiments to assess various spring system configurations that control the ram pump’s check valve. Our goal was to produce a robust spring configuration that let to repeatable spring tension/length settings that allowed flow rate to be optimized in the ram pump. Our original configuration, based on previous results, did not allow repeatable and optimizable forces to be applied to the check valve. We found that some configurations of the spring system led to lateral oscillations of the spring system and others to both large and small oscillations in the longitudinal forces in line with the opening and closing of the check valve, preventing the target head of 6 meters of water to be achieved. We found that by implementing a stronger bottom spring connected to the check valve the entire spring system is stabilized and oscillations are inhibited, allowing a flow rate optimum to be robustly investigated and determined.
Our experimental program showcases the efficiency and reliability of the work process in the ram pump development team and AguaClara in general. Previous work and results are the foundation to new ideas and innovation. For instance, the third and final experiment not only improved upon experiments conducted previously in the reporting period but also upon the spring system constructed by previous development teams in previous years. In the next performance period we will use the results of this reporting period to focus on improving experimental calculations of fundamental hydrodynamic quantities important to our theoretical model. On a broader scale beyond the Cornell University laboratory and ram pump prototype, the determined optimal spring configuration will be implemented in ram pumps across all AguaClara plants. The implementation will simply be adjusting the equilibrium length of the springs to our found optimal lengths for each spring using clamps and a ruler. Simplicity in optimizing and calibrating the system eases the process for plant operators and again, prevents halting or a non-consistent flow of clean, accessible water.
Future Activities:
Previous efforts have laid the necessary groundwork for a theoretical model of the optimal flow rate of the ram pump. However, two idealistic assumptions were made which limited the accuracy of the theoretical calculations and prevented a proper comparison between predicted and experimentally measured flow rates. Namely, the previous calculations assumed that 1) the velocity of the water at the open state of the stop valve was zero, and 2) the time it takes for the stop valve to fully close and fully open is zero, resulting from the fact that friction and viscous forces were assumed to be zero. In the subsequent reporting period, ram pump we will focus on relaxing these assumptions and accounting for the non-idealistic details of the ram pump’s performance. After these calculations are completed and compared with experimental data, the actual efficiency of the ram pump will be determined. From this more accurate measure of efficiency, future errors will be able to better focus on adjusting the spring system to achieve the optimal predicted flow rate.
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractP3 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.