Determination of Critical Delivery Head for Hydraulic Ram Pump

Abstract

In response to the continuous price increase of electricity and diesel fuel, a hydraulic ram pump serves as an alternative water pump that can be useful for farmers and low-income earning citizens living in mountainous areas. However, this pump was observed to have a critical delivery head to work uninterruptedly. This study conducted a field experiment of 10 design cases for drive pipe to determine the critical delivery head of the newly developed hydraulic ram pump using different pipe fittings and a 20-L disposable polycarbonate bottle as a pressure chamber. Results showed that the newly developed hydraulic ram pump reached its highest discharge efficiency of 12.83% and energy efficiency of 84.61% at 9.83 and 10.90 m critical delivery heads, respectively. Results also revealed that the critical delivery head was 86.27% linearly correlated with discharge efficiency and 46.78% linearly correlated with energy efficiency (p < 0.05). Thus, the determination of the critical delivery head provided a baseline reference in ram pump studies that only gave ranges of ratios for the drive head to the delivery head. Furthermore, the newly developed hydraulic ram pump can produce water up to 700 L a day which can be beneficial for households and small-scale agricultural farming.