Customer Query

[den]

Customer: You build automated water tanker fill stations, right?
Me: Yep! We've built them for mines.
C: Good. We have Euclids with 200 tonne* tanks we use to spray the roads.
Me: That won't be a problem, we can build to suit.
C: But there's a power problem. The fill stations will have to use gravity to move the water.
Me: That's still not a problem. We've built gravity-fed systems before.
C: And the tankers have to fill in less than 5 minutes.
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: (grabs calculator. 200,000/300=667 litres/second)
Me: Riiiight.


Over half a tonne of water per second. Fed by gravity. Time to talk to a hydraulic engineer.







*200,000 litres

Comments

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

Height is pressure and usually a butterfly valve would be preferable to keep the actuator size down. It will need a return is all, something up and back towards the tank. It would be rather large if a check valve, but a slightly smaller route with another butterfly will do. Open it just before shut-down. If the bend is after the main valve and the return is the straighter shot the momentum can be dealt with without much of a flex section and a simple spring mount for the valves.

Another tactic would be to fill the tank in about four minutes and allow time to turn the valve on and off. You do need a good read on the tank being filled to ramp it though.