Low-Cost Technology for Water Utility Management

Abstract

The amount of fresh water in the Middle East region is scarce due to long summer seasons with rising temperatures, low precipitation, lack of fresh water resources and increasing population. Thus, the water supply depend mainly on non-conventional resources, such as desalination plants. In this paper, we provide a case study on water distribution system in Kuwait, where the per capita consumption is up to 500 liters/day. The study reveals the limitation of existing mechanical water meters to capture the changes in the water flow due to leaks or improper consumption. We present a tested monitoring system utilizing semi-intrusive technique, as a complement to the existing mechanical water meters. The proposed low-cost technology assists the existing water meters by increasing the accuracy matching to the electronic meters, by alarming the water leakage and by exploring the behavior pattern of daily water usage. The semi-intrusive technique based on the Faraday's Law of electromagnetic induction measures the induced emf in a probe, generated from the applied magnetic field surrounding the pipeline to trace the water flow. We have tested the proposed system in a laboratory setup on a water distribution network, and it has estimated the voltage sensitivity ranging from 0V to 0.027V for a water flow rate of 0 to 0.03774 gallons/second. It is also observed that the sensitivity of the proposed monitoring system is 6% higher than the standard mechanical meter, where a minimum of 0.25 gallons/minute is required to turn the rotor on.



Author Information
Sami J. Habib, Kuwait University, Kuwait
Paulvanna Nayaki Marimuthu, Kuwait University, Kuwait

Paper Information
Conference: ACSEE2016
Stream: Environmental Sustainability & Environmental Management: Freshwater, Oceans and Seas

This paper is part of the ACSEE2016 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon