Water pressure problems at home can be quite frustrating in daily life which is comes in different ways of complication. It may take forever for the faucets to fill a bathtub, or a slow spray shower head and longer time taken for the washing machine to run a cycle. The problem can be fixed by installing a pressure booster pump. This research is embarked to study on a centrifugal pump performance with a view to analyse pressure built-up and flowrate in pipe at fixed speed. A simple and inexpensive test rig is developed to resemble water distribution for domestic use; i.e. house application. The method is then experimentally validated to measured and analysed the pump performance such as water pressure, water flowrate, power of pump and pump speed. Since the centrifugal pump are added, the pump is able to boost the water flowrate. However, since the centrifugal pump work at constant speed, the water pressure in pipe is high when the water demand is low. The maximum pressure inside the pipe was 28.24 psi which quite high and exceed the piping standards. Power consumption also remained constant approximately 0.500 kWh when water demand was low which led to energy wastage.
Generally, water pumps work at a fixed speed. Structural resonance in fixed speed can cause vibration. The reason that most single speed pumps utilize an excessive amount of electricity is that they are overused and oversized. Therefore, this research is embarked to study the characteristic of a pressure-controlled variable speed pump, develop the variable speed pressure controlled pump and analyse the pump performance. A technique is proposed to change the constant speed pump to variable speed pump by adding Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) and microcontroller. A simple test rig is designed and fabricated represented of water distribution for domestic use. The method was then experimentally validated to verify the pump performance and energy used. Data for water flow rate, water pressure, power output and pump speed were analysed. Since the speed can be lowered until 29.27% which according to the water volume demands, therefore the power consumption was found decreased and the lowest power is 0.014 kW. Maximum water discharge capability is 32.38 lpm. It is found that, a variable speed water pump able to save energy up to 97% and led to electricity bill saving and increase the life span of pipes and joints through less hydraulic pressure built-up.
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