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Malaysia Water Research Journal
reliability made them commercially successful, particularly in certain Europe
countries, in the days before automation technology become widely available
(Maratos, 2003). As technology advanced and become increasingly reliant on
sources of power derived from fossil fuels, the ram pump was neglected. Big had
become beautiful and small-scale ram pump technology was unfashionable
(Twort et al., 2000). In the United Kingdom, manually controlled precursor of the
ram pump had been invented (Sakenian Dehkordi and Arshad, 2012; Shuaibu
Ndache Mohammed, 2007; Atharva Pathak et al., 2016). Although hydraulic
ram pump come in a variety of shapes and sizes, they all have the same basic
component states of a ram pump are the main vessel, waste valve, delivery
valve, snifter valve, air chamber and relief valve (Matthias Inthachot et al., 2015;
Wallace and Warren, 1941). Ram pump’s cycle had three phases; acceleration,
delivery and recoil. A cyclic pumping action will produces characteristics
beat during operation. The aim of the study is to identify the performance of
ram pump for achieving sustained performance at optimum operational in
laboratory scale. As to meet the objectives above, the scope of works include
of: testing the performance of ram pump system with capacity of 40 meters
a total maximum head and 30m3 volume water per day (equal to supplying
water to 10 houses model); undertaking full scale test on the ram pump system
inside NAHRIM’s Hydraulic Instrumentation Laboratory; testing ram pump supply
by river flow simulation; testing ram pump supply by reservoir/ lakes/ dam flow
simulation and observing breakdown during testing for maintenance input.
2 METHODOLOGY
The setup component in the project are: a set of supply pump with inverter
system, a unit of ram pump , water tanks (as water supply and receiving tank),
a set of PVC pipeline system, flowmeters, valves and joints,structural component
such as pump plinth and tank platform and some civil worked.
Inverter pump was used to supply water to the ram pump at certain flow
rate. The flow rate was measured by two units of factory calibrated flow meter
that located before and after the ram pump. The most common concept
of surface water flow is cause by two types of sources, that is river water flow
sources; and dam water flow sources from upstream to downstream. Based on
the inconsistency flow rates, the ram pump testing was carried out in several
scenarios. There will be two types of flow, which are (i) river flow simulation (by
M1, By Passed using Inverter system); and (ii) dam simulation (by M2, Static Tank
Method as illustrated in Figure 1 as below. There are six (6) testing scenarios during
the testing period, which are pre-commissioning testing and pre-dam simulation
testing, dam simulation testing, pre-river simulation testing, river simulation testing,
the 24hrs simulation testing and the free flow simulation testing.
Institut Penyelidikan Hidraulik Kebangsaan Malaysia (NAHRIM)
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National Hydraulic Institute of Malaysia (NAHRIM)