CAN A SMART CONTROL VALVE EVALUATE DISCHARGE?

In recent years, water utilities showed an increasing interest for the creation of effective monitoring systems (Gamboa-Medina and Reis (2017); Khorshidi et al (2018); Raei et al. (2018)). The positioning of the components that composes the system is not always straightforward due to space and electric connection requirements. In this context the possibility to use devices that are energetically independent and manage several functions can be profitable. The present work evaluates the opportunity to use the Green Valve System (GVS) (Malavasi et al. (2018)), a stand-alone automatic control valve based on a patent of Politecnico di Milano (Malavasi (2014)), to measure flow rate. The GVS has several features that make it an interesting alternative to common control valves. Especially, it gives the possibility to supply real time data of pressures upstream and downstream the valve through 3G connection and the possibility to be remotely commanded both without the necessity of electrical grid connection. In fact, it is capable to recover and use part of the energy dissipated in the control process (Ferrarese and Malavasi (2020)). This last characteristic is extremely useful for installations where the connection to the electrical grid is particularly difficult. The standard layout of GVS provides for two pressure transducers placed one upstream and one downstream the valve, that in the interest of the present paper can be used for flow rate calculation. The flow rate calculated is compared with other flow meters of reference (an electromagnetic flowmeter and an ultrasonic flowmeter), commonly used in monitoring systems, and with the cumulative volume measured using a certified tank of about 9000 liters. The ability of the GVS in the calculation of flow rate and discharged volume can improve management strategies of the network.