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S
uppose, for a moment, that
Series & Parallel Operation Identical Pumps
you are lounging on a beach
somewhere in the vicinity of 300
290
the equator. If you were to draw side 276
by side two lines in the sand, both 262
heading due north, they will appear 250 246
One Pump
parallel. Although our brains will see 228 Parallel
them as parallel, they are not and—if Series
204
extended—will eventually intersect 200
72 72
65 65
lift station illustrates the importance
60
57 57 of evaluating pump performance
49 49 against the actual system curve.
40 Figure 2 shows the performance
Simplex Duplex
System Curve Design Flow of two identical wastewater pumps
20 operating in a simplex and duplex
300' 6" Steel Pipe (parallel) environment. The black
0 system curve is composed of a static
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 head of 47-ft and the friction head
Gallons Per Minute
produced by 300-ft of 6-in steel
Figure 2 pipe. Valves and fittings increase the
“equivalent” pipe length to 381-ft.
Head (ft)
parallel flow of about 800-gpm, not the 66 66
60 60 60
doubling some of us may have expected.
52 52
(It should also be noted that each pump 45 45
is operating at 400-gpm, which is 25 per- 40
37 37
cent below BEP. We will address this in Simplex Duplex
detail next month.) An 800-gpm peak 20
System Curve Design Flow
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previous example. Additionally, the decreased friction reduces maximum in-flow with a single pump. In these designs, the
the power required at design flow from approximately 14-hp purpose of a duplex system is simply to extend pump life
(6-in pipe) to 11-hp. Under duplex operation, the 24-hp through alternation and provide back up in the case of a pump
required to produce 800-gpm in Figure 2 is reduced to just failure. Others are designed for parallel operation, but maxi-
22-hp at 1000-gpm. mum flow can vary substantially. In some cases, the “as built”
Some duplex lift stations are not designed to accommo- system will differ from the original design. I have seen this
date parallel operation. Instead, the pumps are sized to meet many times in subdivision wastewater stations (and also in the
domestic water and circulation piping
in commercial buildings). Often, these
field changes are not communicated
to the design engineer and the original
drawings are seldom updated. These
changes can affect both parallel opera-
tion and the ability of a single pump to
meet its design flow.
In addition to the influence of the
system curve, there are several other
important conditions that should be
considered when operating pumps in
parallel. These include use of non-iden-
tical pumps, stable versus non-stable
H/Q curves and various methods of
VFD control. Next month we will take
a detailed look at these topics and show
how they can affect both constant pres-
sure and lift station applications.
P&S
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