Abstract
As correct measurement is an essential part of water management, this paper describes a study of the metrological behavior of a range of bulk water meters under different installation conditions. The technologies analyzed included: Woltman horizontal, Woltman vertical, and volumetric valve; single-jet, tangential and proportional meters. Configurations included: straight pipe lengths, gate and butterfly valves at different degrees of closure, rotation and distances from the meter; meter with reducing valve; inverted meter installation or rotated 90o from the horizontal setting. The metrological behavior under different flow conditions was analyzed by comparison with precision water meters (ISO 4064). The results showed significant errors in the Woltman horizontal with inverted flow together with a 75% closed and with rotated and 30o closed butterfly valve at three diameters from the meter. The vertical Woltman gave significant errors only in the reverse installation. The single-jet meter did not show any substantial errors. The tangential water meter had significant errors in the reversed installation and in almost all configurations with gate and butterfly valves. The proportional meter showed significant errors with a gate valve at any degree of closure.
Highlights
Good quality water is an indispensable natural resource for the development of countries
The metrological behaviour of bulk water meters of diverse installation configurations was studied in an ITA Sustainable Urban Water Management test bench at the Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain (Figure 1)
The evaluation of the metrological behaviour of bulk water meters in diverse configurations and operations made it possible to define the configurations with the minimum acceptable metering errors
Summary
Good quality water is an indispensable natural resource for the development of countries. There is increasing worry over its conservation since demand has increased while the supply is decreasing (Constantine et al, 2017; Grafton, 2017; Otaki et al, 2017). The solution to this situation could be either to increase the water supply or to reduce its consumption. It is necessary to obtain precise information on how much water enters the system and how much is consumed, which can be achieved by micro and macro water measurements (Beardsley, 2017). The frequently used technologies include flow meters, such as Woltman, volumetric valve, single-jet, tangential and proportional (Barana et al, 2014; Betta et al, 2002; Daneshnia et al, 2016; Pardo et al, 2013; Wesström et al, 2014; Zhen & Tao, 2008)
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