Design and development of a novel water flow measurement system

Abstract

Abstract The present paper reports the design and developmental aspects of a prototype of an automatic primary water flow standard. The system is based on a unique technique of carrying out multiple weighing using double weighing tanks. The multiple weighing technique has advantages of increasing the collection time by collecting large water mass thereby reducing the diverter error, the main source of measurement uncertainty, consequently improving measurement uncertainty of the system. The longer collection time minimizes the effect of diverter error. This makes cumbersome process of diverter error evaluation insignificant and may be avoided. Another advantage is to use either of the two tanks in case of any one of the tanks becomes out of order and using another tank as stand alone in a single weighing compromising bit measurement uncertainty. The system thus developed is capable of measuring water flow rate and/calibrating different water flow meters having size (15–100) mm, in the flow range from 0.3 m 3 /h to 100 m 3 /h. The estimated relative expanded uncertainties of the system for collected water mass of 2000 kg, 1500 kg, 1000 kg and 500 kg are found as 0.055%, 0.056%, 0.061% and 0.081% (at k = 2), respectively which is sufficient for industrial dissemination. The present designed and developed prototype system is a low-cost solution to users and industries which is easier to operate and maintain with comparable existing systems.