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

Re: Query

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I think we'll put some tanks up high (50m is too high) on a mound.

Re: Query

[brucebergman.livejournal.com]

Look at railroad water towers for inspiration... It's very do-able.

Tanks up high, some sort of a slot trench at the bottom of the tank to prevent/break up any coriolis (swirling) action. BIG butterfly valve at the tank with a slow motorized actuator - if it takes 10 seconds or more for the valve to cycle, no water hammer. Big vacuum breaker right after the valve, unless you want collapsed pipes. And no tower riser at the truck station, put up some truss and go horizontal (aquaduct)when you approach the bottom of the hill - let the pipe drain.

Might even make a honeycomb laminar flow 'rectifier' at the drop outlet - get a clean laminar flow going into the truck instead of messing with a chunk of hose to restrict splashing. Take a Kohler faucet apart for inspiration.

--<< Bruce >>--