Case study: Improving the efficiency of a Laval turbine with a ram pump?

Hi all,

During a feedback session with our coaches, the project manager of Humasol, Wout Cordeel, asked us an interesting question whether the installation of a ram pump can help to extend the efficiency of a water turbine and if this solution would be more cost-efficient or not?

To evaluate a certain set-up, we start with a situation where a Laval turbine is driven by water that drops 70 meters. Suppose that the inlet water flow is 50 l/s and that we want to increase power with 10%.

Can we reach these requirements?
First we start by defining the power that the water can deliver to a Laval turbine with symmetric blades in function of the mass/volume flow: P = f(Q). We can see that we have a linear course so if we increase the volume flow with 10% we get approximately an increase of 10% on the power production of the generator.

Q_delivery = 0.1*50 l/s = 5 l/s = 432000 l/day (we want to pump around 5 l/s with our hydram pump)
Q_supply = 50 l/s + 5 l/s = 55 l/s = 3300 l/min (hydram inlet flow due to mass conservation)

Let’s say that:

H_supply = 14 m (the supply head of the hydram pump)
H_delivery = 14 m + 70 m = 84 m. Let’s take H_delivery = 100 m so that we include losses.

Let’s use a well-documented commercial ram pump for our installation: the Blake Hydram. In tables we can find:

Source: J.P.H.M. Tacke – Hydraulic Rams, a comparative investigation

V_pumped = 132 l/day for each l/min of supply water (the volume water pumped)
V_pumped = 132 (l/day)/(l/min) * 3300 l/min = 435600 l/day which is bigger then the desired situation.

Has this solution an increased cost efficiency?
So now we have found a ram pump that is able to lift the needed amount of water to our Laval supply reservoir we need to check if it’s not better to just built in a bigger Laval turbine. We suppose that the cost of the turbine set-up increase linearly with the power production.

Set-up cost of a Laval turbine: €12000
Set-up cost of a hydram: €1500

Set-up cost of the improved system without a hydram: 1.1*€12000 = €13200
Set-up cost of the improved system with a hydram: €12000 + €1500 = €13500

Conclusion:
We can clearly see that our solution requires quite unpractical supply values and a big hydram pump. We can even see that if our linear cost increment approximation is correct that the system doesn’t gain a better cost-efficiency.

If you have any remarks on the calculation, feel free to join me in the search for cost-efficient optimalisation solutions.

Cheers,
Alexander

Case study: Ram pump implementation in the Philippines

Auke Idzenga, a Dutch-born marine engineer introduced an NGO called the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation, Incorporated (AIDFI). With this movement he tried to provide clean and affordable water in the Philippines and across Asia. In the article/interview that I have red there were posed a lot of socio-economical questions towards Idzenga, from which we can predict what effect the implementation of a hydram pump in a certain community. In this blog post I will make a small summary of the most interesting questions.

A first question handled how he introduced a ram pump to the local community. There he told the interviewer that AIDFI hired a marketing person that printed brochures, shot a video, wrote articles, and developed a website and allowed a prototype to show the working principle. Once several pumps were installed, the hydram began to promote itself. Another question handled the effects on the people’s lives. The hydram made sure that the locals had to spend less effort and time to access drinking water. But because the large volumes and the 24/7 working rate the hydram is ideal for irrigation purposes. Villagers were less dependent on rainfall increasing production and income. For example, the farmers started producing more vegetables the whole year round since the introduction of the pumps.

The NGO became less self-reliant after receiving several awards. They got attention from big companies like for example Coca-Cola who helped financing over 100 hydram sites. Since then they were able to sell ram pumps to other countries and even carrying out complete installation and manufacturing transfer to Afghanistan, Colombia, and Nepal.

The big difficulties that they encountered during the development were getting their hydram patented and dealing with the paper work for each project. Their model was only protected as a utility model, which did not stop other engineers from copying it. For each project a lot of paper pushing had to be done before the installation. Some villages made a bigger problem out of this than others.

For our small project, we can see that there are several things that we can learn from other projects. Things like promotion, patents and paper work did not yet cross my mind while these seem to be important factors. This summer, Lauren and I will visit several regions of Uganda where we will try to search a good partner/location for a hydraulic ram installation. So our promotion won’t be as wide like the AIDFI organisation but we will certainly have to try our best in convincing locals to let us help improve their hydraulic system.

I hope that this article gives a good insight at how the practical implementation of such a project comes together. If you have any remarks or questions concerning the article or our project, don’t hesitate to ask them.

Cheers,
Alexander

You can find the article here.

Ram pump technology for treatment of wastewater

Hi everyone,

In my previous post, I talked about four consequences that could be taken into account to use fertile soils that were unused until now. It this post, I want to zoom into one of these four points namely:

• integration of appropriate technologies when, for example, wastewater from industrial food processing be treated and re-utilized for irrigation purposes.

One of the companies actively investigating the use of ram pumps for this purpose is “EMS industries” located in England (EMS Industries, 2015).

First, the sludge should be separated into water and grit. This can be done by solid separator. This machine splits waste water in clear water and sludge. The principle is explained in the following picture.

Afterwards both the water and the sludge should be transported. For the sludge EMS has designed a ram pump that’s able to pump away this substance. EMS produces 3 ram pumps especially for the use of sludge. Sludge is often very dense and therefore it’s difficult to pump with traditional pumps because they all become constipated and require a lot of maintenance. The ram pumps themselves work on the same principle as a regular ram pump but are driven with a hydraulic press to be able to suck the sludge. Several case studies were done to prove the feasibility of the pumps. They showed that for the use of sludge, the ram pump is superior over other technologies which were previously used.

The clean water can be used for irrigation again. But the water has to be distributed to several locations again. Depending on the location of the waste water producer and the client, ram pump could or could not be used. For instance, if the distance is too long compared with the supply head, the ram pump will not be able to produce sufficient delivery head. In this case another transportation method should be used.

We see the ram pumps can come in at two places to obtain the goal we set at the beginning of the post. Therefore it seems to me that the ram pump is a good technology to implement. Especially because they require low maintenance costs so a stable water supply is guaranteed.

Do you agree with me on this topic or do you think there are better alternatives to reach the stated objective?

Greetings,

Lauren

Bibliografy

EMS Industries. (2015, February 15). EMS Industries. Taken From van emsgb: http://www.emsgb.com/index.html

Sustainable irrigation

Hi everyone,

In a world with constant hunger in poor areas, a lot of natural fertile surfaces remain unused. These surfaces would be able to feed 750 million people according to GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) (GIZ, 2015). The reason that they are not used today is that the fields are over salted or there is a lack of proper irrigation systems.

Next to the fact they would be able to feed so many people, they would be able to create around 50 million jobs around the world. To use these soils without compromising their future fertility we have to think about the best social, economic, technical and ethical structure for this to take place. The report presents 4 points to reach this objective (Chi & Diemer, 2002):

• to consider agriculture within a framework of environmental and resources conservation
• domestic water supply systems to be considered as part of a small structured village supply systems
• integration of appropriate technologies when, for example, wastewater from industrial food processing be treated and re-utilized for irrigation purposes.
• Of special importance are ways to involve village inhabitants in the planning of their village development and to consider their social demands, which is an especially important aspect.

The report suggests to reach this objective by placing ram pumps together with some other consequences. Because the ram pump doesn’t need an external energy supply, it’s perfect to conserve resources in an environmentally friendly way. The second point can be achieved if the whole community with different stakeholders are on the same page about the topic. By structuring this, the consumption of energy and water can be minimized to an optimal solution. A solution to do this would be to start a cooperation. The members of the local village could all become cooperates of a local water supply cooperation so they are actively integrated in the situation. The third point is again structural by two stakeholders, the cooperation and the company that wastes water, working together to a mutual gain, reusing the waste water. How I suggest to integrate the fourth and last point is actually described before as the start-up of cooperation with all inhabitants and a collaboration between the company and the cooperation.

These four points combined give a representation of a sustainable integration to use the fertile soils all over the world. The technology of a ram pump can help to build a network for this objective. The ram pumps can be placed in multiple phases which gives a chance to spread the costs over a larger period which gives the project time to grow and evaluate the consequences.

If you have any suggestions or remarks, feel free to comment.

Greetings,

Lauren

References

Chi, P. M., & Diemer, P. (2002). Hydraulic Ram Handbook. Taken from Borda: http://www.borda-net.org/fileadmin/borda-net/Knowledge/Implementation%20Manuals/064%2520BORDA_HydRam-Handbook.pdf

GIZ. (2015, february 8). GIZ. Taken from GIZ: http://www.giz.de/en/html/index.html

Economic aspects of hydraulic ram pump

Hello everyone,

In previous posts, I’ve often said hydraulic ram pumps would mean a lower initial cost, lower maintenance cost and high reliability. But is this really true? Because, if we want to install this pump it should be the best alternative so no unnecessary costs will be taken.

I found an interesting paper on this topic on some Chinese test cases. It’s an article of 2002 from a Chinese professor called Ma Chi and a diplomat from Borda calles Peter Diemer. Borda is the abbreviation for the “Bremen overseas research and development association”. Their mission is to make improved sanitation for everyone. In my previous post I already mentioned why improved sanitation is important.

Let’s give a small representation of the accessible methods in China to get water to the fields. The first one is through domestic water distributed by a water company. The cost of this lies around 0.5 rmb per m³ water(the value of one rmb lies around 0.13 euro). A second possibility is through river water pumped up by an electrical or diesel pump. This cost is about 3 rmb/m³. The solar and wind pumping systems have high initial costs that make the average cost around 30 rmb/m³. The hydraulic ram pump has an initial cost which is lower comparable with the electrical and diesel pumps. However they need no external energy supply. For pumps that can pump up to 100 m³ a day the cost is about 20.000 rmb. If we assume 0.5 rmb/m³ for the cheapest method, namely the domestic water, it would take about a year to earn this investment back. Maintenance costs for ram pumps are about 500 rmb/ year so this makes little difference on the total outcome. It would take 3 years to make profit from replacing an electrical pump by a ram pump without selling the old pump.

From this, it is clear that ram pumps are by far the most economical pumps (of course when it’s possible to place a ram pump) The time an investment is paid back is relatively short. For us, this means we have to take into account whether or not the ram pump can be placed and of course the need of water supply has to be there. From an economical point of view, there are no better alternatives than to place this type of pump. However, this should always be checked upon location so no errors are made.

Do you think ram pumps will be the best possible pump from an economical view, or do you think I’ve overlooked something?

Feel free to comment.

Greetings,

Lauren

Sources:

Chi, P. M., & Diemer, P. (2002). Hydraulic Ram Handbook. Opgehaald van Borda: http://www.borda-net.org/fileadmin/borda-net/Knowledge/Implementation%20Manuals/064%2520BORDA_HydRam-Handbook.pdf

Africa’s biggest challenge in the 21st century

Hi all,

It has been a while since my last post. With Christmas on the horizon, students are forced to set priorities and keen time management to combine all of our work so we are both prepared for the exams and upcoming thesis presentations.

I red an article last week on Resilience, this is a community of action-oriented groups concerning the biggest worlds emerging challenges. It’s a place where all fronts of discussions are open and everybody can share their thoughts. But it is also a place where you can find lots of interesting articles with scientific backgrounds. In the article, the author C. Seiler discussed the biggest emerging threat for Africa: the exploding population growth and all the problems it brings like food demand.

A report of the United Nations predicts that eight of the ten countries with the highest growth rates in the world for the period 2005 to 2055 are African. This implies that the total population of the African continent will double to an astonishing two billion in the next 40 years. With each increment of population, we need an even large increment in food supply if we don’t wish to have a more severe food problematic. This can be realised by either increasing the amount of food that is imported, or by increasing the domestic food production.

Studies have shown that modern farming will not be able to be sustainable to reach the African demands for imported food. ” The main reason for this is that modern agriculture depends heavily on water, fossil fuels and phosphate rock (for fertilizer)”. Those last two factors are finite and are becoming scarce and expensive. If we look to a recent example, the rice crisis of 2008 was partially caused by the rise in fuel prices. The same crisis caused a 700% price increase of phosphate rock. But most important, there is a threatening lack of water available for agricultural purposes. For example, the chairman of Nestlé is convinced that we will run faster out of water then fossil fuels due to the bad water management.

The limitations in resources, and the fact that all countries are expected to grow in population has as consequence that Africa’s challenge should be handled by increasing the domestic food production. The key factor for growing crops is soil quality, and 50% of Africa’s territory is insufficient for growing food apart from nomadic grazing. With the climate change grounds are getting dryer and it’s here where I want to make a link with my master thesis. Controlled irrigation with a hydram pump can help improve the humidity for a wide area of soil, and therefor make it more available for producing food. It is important that irrigation is done right, if not, soil erosion could have a reverse effect and destroy valuable quality soil.

But will improving irrigation systems alone be sufficient enough to face the growing problems? I’m sure it will not. Some countries like for example Somalia don’t have the option of increasing their domestic food production due to the harsh environmental constraints. The truth is that many areas in Africa already disfavour agriculture. The key aspect where farmers should aim at is improving their farming efficiencies.

What do you guys think of the topic? Do you also believe that the population growth is Africa’s biggest problem? Does anyone have ideas for possible solutions?

Let me know, and I’ll gladly respond!
Cheers,
Alexander

You can find the article here.

No safe sanitation for 2,5 billion people in the world

Hi everyone,

Last week I was reading a journal in the train. I came across an article in Metro concerning sanitation across the world. The article states that 2,5 billion people have no access to clean sanitation. That’s about 1/3th of the global population. This causes the spread of bacteria’s and causes death due to diseases like cholera, polio, hepatitis and diarrhea all over the world. A second problem is that due to unclosed toilets, there is a higher rape and abuse rate. To raise awareness for this huge problem, the United Nations Water Department came up with the idea of “World Toilet day”. To show you the impact of this problem, they made the following video:

Fo this day, some people have organized events. Several famous Swedes have made an own design of a toilet and sold those to donate money to the organisation of the United Nations. You can find them in picture underneath.

But, I hear you think, what has this to do with Ram pumps? Like mentioned in the video, a lot of people use rivers to go to the toilet and thereby poison the waters. This damages the natural value of the water. In case of a river, the supply, which is necessary for the ram pump, is available. By pumping the water to a reservoir to store, it can be used on a later moment to use for sanitation goals. The rigidness and low cost of the ram pump makes it possible to install large numbers of ram pumps in a short amount of time. Of course, just by installing ram pumps, the problem won’t be solved. The ban of open toilets should be a priority at the same time. To look at this from an economical point of view, this requires an initial cost and about 20 dollars per year to maintain. But at the same time, you’re investment is paid back with a rate of 500% due to the reduced health care costs (you can’t get this at the bank, do you?).

We can conclude that by investing in safe sanitation, which is possible with ram pumps, we can both save lives and reduce the rate of rape and abuse. And all of this with a relatively low cost and high payback rate.

Feel free to comment.

Greetings,

Lauren

Sources:

Article: http://nl.metrotime.be/2014/11/19/must-read/2-5-miljoen-mensen-hebben-geen-veilig-sanitair/

Additional info: http://www.unwater.org/worldtoiletday/home/en/

https://www.greenempowerment.org/countries/philippines/

Will humanitarian organizations make a difference?

Hi everyone,

If our ram pump will be placed, it will be done in a developing country. This is of course a kind of humanitarian help. First I thought that humanitarian help was unconditionally good, but then I found this interesting quote of Paul Kagame (President Rwanda).

“ There is bad aid and there is good aid. The bad aid is that one which creates dependencies, but good aid is that which is targeted to create capacities in people, so that they are able to live on their own activities.”                                                                                                  

A question we have to ask ourselves : “Whether or not placing this ram pump will be a form of good or bad humanitarian aid?”

So let’s have a look at the video below. You will see Dambiso Moyo talking about the negative side effects humanitarian aid has on Africa. Dambiso was born in Zambia, but went to the United States to graduate in economics. The video is quite long but it gives a critical view on how countries are handling towards humanitarian aid today.

To give a short resume: A lot of succeeded aiding plans have worked because they are finite (ea. South Korea). In Africa, aiding plans are often not finite. This results in governments and people that begin to rely on these aid and do not search for own solutions. Governments are also more likely to be corrupt if they accept a lot of aid money. By giving aid to countries, it creates an image that these countries cannot take care of their own. The image of the developing countries are too negative, so no one wants to invest in these countries because of their image. This makes it hard for developing countries to come out of the poverty they are in nowadays. In contrast to America and Europe, China is investing in African countries by supporting them much more productively. They are building roads and help the people over there to start their own businesses.

Own Opinion

At Humasol, the projects only take place for a short amount of time. In this way, we are not giving them money to spend. We help them with infrastructural changes. A good precedent of ours is the AIDFI organization. They are building ram pumps all around the world together with local partners. In this way, people are able to build other pumps for themselves. An important aspect is that we give this people the knowledge to maintain the machines themselves. So in a long term, they can depend on themselves rather than depend on aid. For all these reasons, I think by going abroad to build our pump, we can give good aid to the people over there. But we have to realize that just building the pump will not be sufficient. The transition of knowledge is much more important for the eventual development of the country.

What is your opinion about this topic? Please, leave a comment down below.

Greetings,

Lauren

Sources

Kagame, P., 2013. Poverty Cure. [Online]
Available at: http://www.povertycure.org
[Geopend 20 November 2014].

Moyo, D., 2013. Dambisa Moyo. [Online]
Available at: http://www.dambisamoyo.com/
[Geopend 18 November 2014].

vzw, H., sd Projectvisie. [Online]
Available at: http://www.humasol.be/projectvisie
[Geopend 15 November 2014].

Wake-up call on water scarcity

Hi everyone,

I saw an interesting discussion online with three Israeli experts, talking about management techniques and technologies. Israel already has a past in water scarcity and has therefor developed more efficient ways in using water then countries with a high availability of water. With lots of water is still being wasted and infected with chemicals, the amount of clean water is still descending. It’s unbelievable if you know that only one percentage of the whole water capacity is drinkable, that we still waste so much water.

The scientists state that if we look at using water efficiently, we often work with expressions of profit per unit water. This, while we actually need to express the contribution of that unit water towards society. Israel, 47 years ago, used only drinkable water for farming while now they use over 68% of treated reclaimed sewage water and only 24% drinkable water. The remaining 8% is used by what the experts call brackish water. This while the quality of the product doesn’t change together with a ten times bigger production rate then 47 years ago. Is this sufficient? This is off course a step in a good direction but the scientists state that there is still a gap between availability and demand.

They know that markets drive scientists, therefor they remain positive towards the future. Lots of researchers have already found techniques and methods to increase the efficiency of desalination of for example seawater. According to the experts, they have reached a quite affordable desalination process that would require around 3.75 kWh of energy together with a total cost of around 60 US dollar cents per cubic meter water. We still have to increase research on the matter to find better solutions because the technique that will be used in the end will be dependent on the cost, and particularly on the profit.

What struck me was the fact that there was already indeed a way of desalinating salt water for a quite reasonable price. But this would only be affordable probably in developed regions and therefor I didn’t feel like the whole scarcity problem was being handled. For each cubic metre water we waste today, we will have to pay 3.75 kWh on energy tomorrow to reuse the water, quite a striking figure if you look at the holistic of this problem. Energy resources are drying out, and therefor probably green energy will be needed to convert salt water.

I, as an engineering student, am also quite positive towards the future in the scarcity problem in developed countries. After hearing terms like the blue gold, I know for a fact that industries feel that there is a market at play where lots of money is to be made. With research teams with adequate funding and the global network I am optimistic that scientist will engineer more efficient ways for the desalinisation of water, in my opinion the best solution to the scarcity in developed countries. But what for still developing countries who often don’t have the pipe connections for large transport of sea water to the main land? In that case we still need to find more adequate solutions where there is not a solution available, nor is the industry thinking of funding researchers for that goal because the profit will never exceed the one they could make with desalinisation installations.

In this case I look quite negative towards the scarcity in still developing countries. I think the solution for them would mostly be dependent on their own research and humanitarian aids like engineers without borders or other organisations who search for robust, cheap and therefor most likely less efficient methods to help everyone to a clean water supply.

Here you find the video of the interview, it takes over 20 minutes to view it but its worth the time.

Questions? Remarks? Feel free to react!
Cheers and until the next post,
Alexander

A ram pump to save animal lives

Hello everyone,

Like mentioned in the previous post, a ram pump allows water to be pumped up to higher levels. This water supply can then be placed off-stream. That’s nice, but, what can we achieve by installing ram pumps in emerging countries?

Cattle is often very important in the life of farmers in the south. When these animals only have a river as a supply for drinking water, the grounds alongside this rivers often become very muddy. It is shown that mastitis (an infection on the udder) and foot rot are greater among cattle herds allowed to enter these muddy areas. These infections could damage the population of the cattle and therefore infect the life of the farmer as well. If the animals would have a restricted area for drinking which the farmer can easily maintain, the problem would mainly be solved. The biggest obstacles in placing these off stream water supplies are the high set-up cost and the need of a reliable energy supply. (The Univeristy of Georgia, 1998)

A ram pump can’t be placed in any situation but overcomes most of these obstacles since it can be placed with a small installation and maintaining cost and has no need of an external energy supply. The only conditions are that there is a large flow and an initial height difference. Ram pumps could make the availability of these maintainable drinking places bigger in places with the right conditions. The presence of these drinking places can play an important role for the farmers. If the cattle would die less on diseases, they would be able to maintain more animals and raise their standard of living.

If we compare a map of poverty (UN Human develoment incices, 2008), with a map that shows height differences (NOAA, 2006), we can see that the amount of people living in places where both height differences and poverty are present are rather big. In areas like central and eastern Africa, the west of south America and Asia. This is the reason why it think animal lives and thereby farmers standard of living could be raised by installing ram pumps.

However, do you think that ram pumps can make a global difference in fighting poverty? Let me know what you think about this in the comment area.

Cheers,

Lauren

References

NOAA, 2006. Earth-whole-planet-2D-map-from-NOAA-recoloure, sl: sn

The Univeristy of Georgia, 1998. Hydraulic Rams For Off-Stream Livestock Watering, Georgia: University of Georgia.

UN Human develoment incices, 2008. Percentage of population living on less than 2$ a day, New York: UN.