ECH 3203 Quiz 7 Solution

Water flows through the pipe network shown below into a tank at atmospheric pressure.
All pipes are 10cm steel pipes with threaded connections. Gate valve B is completely
closed while gate valve A is ¼ closed. Meter C is an orifice meter similar to the one
described in figure 8.41 of your book and has a orifice diameter of 4cm. A pressure drop
across of the meter of 500kPa is recorded.

C
A

3m

B
7m

a. If entrance and exist effects are negligible and the flow profile correction factor
αis very nearly 1, determine the pressure leaving the pump.

We know the pressure drop across the flow meter so we can use the equation
2Δp
Q = C 0 A0
(
ρ 1− β 4 )
to determine the flow rate. The orifice meter chart gives us C0 as a function of beta and
Reynolds number. β = 0.1 but without a flow rate we can’t calculate a Reynolds number.
C0 values on the chart range from 0.60 to 0.64 so if we guess 0.60 we shouldn’t be far
off.

This guess yields

Q = 0.025m 3 / s
v = 3.16m / s
Re = 2.82 × 10 5
So our guess for C0 was reasonable.

With a flow rate we can use the equation:

P1 v1 2 P v 2
+ + z1 = 2 + 2 + z 2 + hL
ρg 2 g ρg 2 g
We know the outlet is at atmospheric and continuity demands the velocity in and out be
the same so
P1 l v2 v2
= z 2 − z1 + f + KL
ρg D 2 2

ε
The roughness of steel pipe is 0.045mm so = 0.00045 . With this we can use the
D
Moody chart to get f ≈ 0.019 . K is the sum of the values for the tee, the elbow and the
valve so
K L = 2.0 + 1.5 + 0.26
where the values used are for threaded pipes (given in the problem) and a regular radius
elbow (assumed).

With f and K the pressure P1 can be determined. Adding this pressure to the flow meter
pressure drop yields the required pump pressure.

b. Briefly, but clearly, describe how your solution process would change if both
valves were half open.

The modified Bernoulli equation above would have to be used twice, once for each
branch. The two equations can be connected by the fact that the pressure drop in each
branch has to be the same. An iterative solution would be needed to find the fraction of
the flow that goes through each pipe to make that possible. Note that head losses that are
in parallel rather than series cannot simply be added together.