Complex engineering problem and poster competition of instrumentation

and measurement course, DSU Karachi, 24 December 2018

“Design and development ACKNOWLEDGEMNNTS:

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to
of a non-invasive (clamp) the following people and organisations for
flow measurement their invaluable support over the past two
years:
system.” . My parents for their continued love and
support.
First Author TAHA, Second . My supervisor, Dr. Sabih for his advice and
Author SHAHZAD, Third Author AIZAZ guidance during the undertaking of this
, Fourth Author SALMAN and project.
Fifth Author AHMED
1.INTRODUCTION
Non-invasive flow meters do not come
1:
tahatarique960@gmail.com
into contact with the fluid being measured.
Non-invasive flow meters are generally non-
2: intrusive as well meaning that the fluid flow
Shahzadbahadur1998@gmail.com path is not altered by the presence of the
sensor. Non-invasive flow meters function by
3:
aizaz619@gmail.com
measuring a physical aspect which is caused
or in some way affected by fluid flow. They
4: are sometimes referred to as "inferential flow
Salmansadiq197@gmail.com meters" because they infer the flow rate by
measuring other physical properties related to
5:
fluid flow Because non-invasive flow meters
cannot measure the fluid directly, they are
ABSTRACT more prone to other factors which affect their
accuracy. An example of a fluid property
The purpose of the research was to design a which can affect the performance of non-
non-invasive water flow meter with the invasive flow meters is the velocity profile of
intention of applications in smart geyser the fluid Flow meters which are both non-
system. (Electric water heaters are responsible invasive and non-intrusive have the benefits
for a large portion of electricity consumption of no fluid pressure loss, retrofit installation
and water usage in the domestic sector. Smart capability, no corrosion (because transducers
water heaters alleviate the strain on the are not wetted), no wear and tear as there are
electricity supply grid and reduce water no moving parts, and the ability to operate
consumption through behavioural change, but using problematic fluids.
the installation of in-line flow meters is
inconvenient and expensive. Electric water 2. SUBMITTING THE PAPER
heaters are responsible for a large portion of
The Full paper had been submitted
electricity consumption and water usage in
electronically by e-mail to the following
the domestic sector. addresses:
Keywords: Hot water flow estimation, smart Network 1:
water heaters, smart grid.) learningcom2012@uoc.edu
Network 2:
prconference2012@uoc.edu
. And it should be submitted by 24
DECEMBER 2018.
1
 investigated to design a non-invasive flow
meter which required less expensive
3. PAPER FORMAT. components and did not require a complex
installation. The use of thermal methods only
3.1. Tables and Figures
to measure domestic flow was investigated. It
Following are some different flow was determined to be impractical due to the
measurement scenarios which include small temperature differences associated with
domestic usage, oil & gas industry, water domestic conditions and the di-cult
pipelines, processing industry etc. This will installation required for accurate temperature
help us to identify different aspects and measurements using inexpensive sensors. A
challenges faced in different applications. non-invasive flow estimation algorithm was
Applicati Type of pipe Diameter Wall Type of Flow rate of
ons (steel, plastic, of pipe (in thickne fluid the fluid designed which used the fusion of thermal
etc) or mm) ss of (gas, air,
pipe water, oil, and vibration data provided using relatively
(inches
or mm)
multiphase
) inexpensive sensors which did not require
Water PVC (Type
1/2" to
170" to Gas, air, (480 to complex installation. The algorithm was able
geyser plastic) 0.250” etc. 900)
system. 3/4" gallons per
to detect hot water usage events with over 90
hours % accuracy using thermal and vibration data.
Proces steel, 14” 0.250” Oil, gas, (6000)
s aluminium, to sludge, gallons per
Event detection was successful for flow
Industri plastic, 14.06” etc. min events spaced at least 2 minutes apart. Flow
es copper, etc. rate estimation was performed using vibration
Gas Steel or 16 “to 0.500” Gas, 250
pipeline copper 48” crude oil, MMSCFD
data. A quadratic relationship between higher
mostly etc. industrial flow rates and vibration standard
deviation was found in literature, but a linear
relationship was found for domestic
3.2. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION conditions. Succinctly accurate quantitative
Pakistan has experienced electricity and flow rate estimation was possible for flow
water shortages in recent years. The use of rates above 5 L min−1 . The results of this
smart geyser controller units has the potential study show a proof of concept that non-
to decrease the electricity and water invasive ow measurement can be performed
consumption associated with the domestic for domestic conditions using the
sector. The installation of an in-line, invasive combination of thermal and vibration
flow meter is the most expensive aspect of the methods. The required consumption data can
costs associated with smart geyser controllers. be gathered with a system that does not
The aim of the project is to develop a non- require expensive components or a complex
invasive, retrofit water flow meter which is installation procedure.
intended to be used for smart geyser
controllers in domestic applications. The 4.WORKING PRINCIPLE
successful design of such a non-invasive Geyser which is a pressurized hot water
water flow meter would decrease the container utilized in household causes the high-
installation cost and installation power consumption and at the same time
degrading the efficiency of the heating element
inconvenience associated with smart geyser
due to heat loses, i.e., overheating of the
controllers. This means that more individuals element. This paper presents the smart geyser
can use smart geyser controllers which can which operates in two modes (i) Autonomous
result in a greater total decrease in resource Mode (ii) User Mode. A temperature sensor
consumption. Several non-invasive fluid probe is used as a control switch which is used
measurement methods were investigated in to regulate the water temperature of geyser by
the context of domestic hot water adjusting the heating duration of the element.
flow. Many were found to be too The study reveals the control topologies used
to reduce the power consumption and to
expensive or require complex installation increases the efficiency of the geyser. The
which meant that they would not provide the system consists of Atmega16 microcontroller
intended convenience to users. Thermal which determines the hot water profile through
methods and vibration methods were temperature probe in Autonomous fof geyser as
2
per the demand profile developed by user.
From the result it is apparent that by controlling
the temperature of the geyser, the heat loses in
the Geyser element and saving of electricity
power consumption can be made.
5.SENSOR BASE ON NON-INVASIVE
MEASUREMENT
A Raspberry Pi 3 was used to sample the sensors and
control the water flow experiments. The RPi has
su-cient GPIO pins to receive the flow meter data
(GPIO pulses sampled using GPIO interrupts) and
control the solenoid valve (SV). I2C communication is
also supported to communicate with the accelerometer
and temperature sensors. The RPi has 3.3V VCC lines
which are su-cient for the flow meters, accelerometer
and temperature sensors. The solenoid valve required
12V to operate and this was supplied using an external
3
power source in for form of an AC to DC converter. SV
toggling using was done 12V relays which were controlled
using the RPi GPIO pins.
A breakout board PCB was designed to conveniently
house all the required components and provide more
I2C connection points1.
A photograph of the RPi and PCB with the I2C sensor
connections can be found in Figure B.6 in Section B.1.
The PCB used can be found in Figure B.7.
6. HARDWARE
The hardware considerations for the experimental unit
were to mimic user conditions closely but additionally
facilitate repeatable control tests to generate a dataset,
Dataset 1, which was used to develop the ow
estimation algorithm. Additional tests were performed
using the experimental unit to test other factors of
operation to generate Datasets 2 and 3.
A diagram of the experimental unit is shown in Figure
4.1. The experimental unit was set up in a steam room
on the ground oor of the Electrical and Electronic (E&E)
Engineering Building at Stellenbosch University.
600kPa Municipal water supply was available using
plumbing fixtures which passed through an outside wall.
The hot water outlet passed through the exterior wall
before entering the drainage system. This meant that
the ambient air temperature remained as close to real
world conditions as possible as the hot water left the
outlet pipe su-ciently far away from the EWH location.
The steam room was located next to the E&E
Workshop which contains heavy machinery. Large
vibrations were measured which did not correspond to
water flow or experimental unit adjustments, which
indicated that the vibrations from the heavy machinery
were measured by the system. A large air compressor
was located very close to the EWH installation and this
was suspected to be the cause of the vibration
anomalies.
7. SOFTWARE
The software design required sampling of sensors,
scheduling of function executions and flow events, and
storage of the recorded data. The three aspects are
interlinked and are thus di-cult to explain in isolation.
Experiments were designed and executed (using
scheduling) to generate specific, useful dataThe data
sampling and storage script, or "acquisition system",
was executed on the RPi. The acquisition system was
coded using Python 2.7 to ensure that all the required
python packages were compatible. Python packages
which were heavily used in the acquisition system were
Pandas to store and manipulate local data,
APScheduler ('Advanced Python Scheduler') to control
when functions were executed, and SQLAlchemy to
connect to the MySQL database to store recorded data.
A library was available to setup LSM303 accelerometer
which reduced the development time.
The acquisition system was used to sample all the
sensors, performed the scheduled opening and closing
of SV to induce flow events according to a pre-
determined schedule and stored the recorded data to a
local MySQL database. The data stored in the MySQL
databases generated Datasets 1, 2 and 3 which were
post-processed as described in Chapter 5 to create and
evaluate the non-invasive flow estimation system.

8. SIMULATION:

REFERENCES.

For more information, please visit:

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/
10019.1/103573/pirow_development_2018.
pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y