TY - GEN
T1 - Computational analysis of hydro-powered bunyip pump
AU - Beard, Scott Daniel
AU - Al Qubeissi, Mansour
AU - Khanal, Bidur
PY - 2023/8/12
Y1 - 2023/8/12
N2 - With the emerging energy demand, water shortage in rural areas, electric supply challenges, and urgent needs for net zero technologies, there has been a recent response with alternative Hydro-Powered Pumping (HPP) technology, known as the Bunyip. The recently developed system continues to build commercial success, designed to overcome several limitations associated with the previous technology of Hydraulic Ram Pump (HRP) system, such as capacity, height and water leakage issues. This paper is aimed at providing in-depth investigation into the HPP system and possible further hydraulic enhancement, using CFD parametric analysis. This could provide an insight into the fundamental flow mechanics, operational efficiency, standard capacity, and relative delivery. The investigation comprises an initial manufacture data appraisal of performance for three HPP devices. We paired our analysis with the meticulous application and numerical modelling to gather the parametric dataset, and validate against physical testing data. One key finding was that for a delivery head of 50 m, a 6 L/s supply at 4 m of head, resulted in an efficiency of 12% with respect to the water delivered relative to the volume 'wasted‘ through the discharge. Thus, in order to facilitate some of the distinguishing features for the Bunyip, the efficiency is sacrificed to a value lower than that comparable to an HRP.
AB - With the emerging energy demand, water shortage in rural areas, electric supply challenges, and urgent needs for net zero technologies, there has been a recent response with alternative Hydro-Powered Pumping (HPP) technology, known as the Bunyip. The recently developed system continues to build commercial success, designed to overcome several limitations associated with the previous technology of Hydraulic Ram Pump (HRP) system, such as capacity, height and water leakage issues. This paper is aimed at providing in-depth investigation into the HPP system and possible further hydraulic enhancement, using CFD parametric analysis. This could provide an insight into the fundamental flow mechanics, operational efficiency, standard capacity, and relative delivery. The investigation comprises an initial manufacture data appraisal of performance for three HPP devices. We paired our analysis with the meticulous application and numerical modelling to gather the parametric dataset, and validate against physical testing data. One key finding was that for a delivery head of 50 m, a 6 L/s supply at 4 m of head, resulted in an efficiency of 12% with respect to the water delivered relative to the volume 'wasted‘ through the discharge. Thus, in order to facilitate some of the distinguishing features for the Bunyip, the efficiency is sacrificed to a value lower than that comparable to an HRP.
KW - Mechanical, aeronautical and manufacturing engineering
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-30960-1_7
DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-30960-1_7
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 9783031309595
T3 - Springer Proceedings in Energy
SP - 61
EP - 71
BT - Energy and Sustainable Futures
PB - Springer Nature Switzerland AG
T2 - The 3rd International Conference on Energy and Sustainable Futures (ICESF)
Y2 - 7 September 2022 through 8 September 2022
ER -