Simulação computacional de bombas com velocidade de rotação variável no EPANET

• Ano de defesa: 2015
• Autor(a) principal: Coutinho, Ricardo Santos
• Orientador(a): Soares, Alexandre Kepler
• Banca de defesa: Soares, Alexandre Kepler, Formiga, Klebber Teodomiro Martins, Vasco, Joel Roberto Guimarães
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Goiás
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-graduação em Engenharia do Meio Ambiente (EEC)
• Departamento: Escola de Engenharia Civil - EEC (RG)
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Eficiência; Bomba de rotação variável; Rede de distribuição de água; EPANET
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Efficiency; Variable speed pump; Water distribution network; EPANET
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: ENGENHARIA SANITARIA::RECURSOS HIDRICOS; ENGENHARIA SANITARIA::SANEAMENTO AMBIENTAL
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/5189

In water distribution systems, most of the electricity is consumed by pumping systems. Thus, reducing the inefficiency of the pump can provide significant energy savings. This can be achieved by substituting fixed-speed pumps by variable-speed pumps (VSP). However, the high costs of installation and operation of the VSPs require a preliminary economic assessment of the design, which is usually accompanied by the use of hydraulic solvers to simulate the behavior of the water network. One of the most used softwares for this purpose is the EPANET 2, which uses the gradient method for the hydraulic analysis of the steady flow. However, the EPANET 2 is inaccurate when computing the VSP efficiency. This is because the software does not take into account the changes in the pump efficiency curve when the pump speed is changed. In this study, a routine for calculating VSPs efficiency, based on the Sârbu and Borza (1998) formula, is implemented in the source code of the EPANET 2. The influence of the new routine on the results predicted by the software for efficiency, power and energy consumption of the VSP is evaluated in simulations with a hypothetical network. The results showed that the original version of EPANET 2 tends to underestimate the efficiency and thus overestimate the power and energy consumption of the VSPs. In the present case, the energy consumption of the system predicted by the original version of EPANET 2 was 21.99% higher than the predicted by the modified version. These results point out that the modified version of EPANET 2 provides a better prediction of VSPs behavior and thus its use is recommended in the simulation of water distribution networks equipped with VSPs.