Factors influencing the quality of flow measurements in drinking water systems – lessons learned

M. A. Silva,, D. Loureiro, A. S. Ribeiro, C. Amado

Abstract

The flow measurement is essential for drinking water network monitoring. A better knowledge about the flow that is abstracted or pumped to drinking water systems, transferred between water utilities or monitored at the entrance of the subsystems can be achieved through the flow measurement. Nevertheless, this is a topic insufficiently studied. The accuracy can be an excellent parameter to the analysis of the uncertainty sources impact on the measurements obtained from manufacturer’s catalogues, and the contributions related with installation, data acquisition, transfer, storage and processing. To understand the influence of these factors in flow data, a set of flowmeters from six water utilities was selected and surveyed in this paper. This paper aims to explore a methodology to analyse the relationship between the uncertainty in daily flow patterns and influential factors. To run the analysis, a robust coefficient of variation was computed for each hour of the workday flow pattern. The most influential factors were: the direction of the flow measurement, year of installation and practices adopted for nominal diameter selection. Although the flow profiles and the elbows are considered in the literature as factors that influence the measurement, in this set of flowmeters, no influence was verified. This exploratory analysis allowed to point out factors related to flowmeter installation that have a significant impact on the quality of the flow measurements.

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DOI

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IMEKO TC

TC9 - Flow Measurement

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