Experimental Study of Check Valves in Pumping Systems with Air Entrainment

Abstract

An experiment setup was introduced to study dynamic behaviour of different types of check valves and the effects of air entrainment on the check valve performance under pressure transient condition. The experiment results show that the check valves with low inertia, assisted by springs or small traveling distance/angle gave better performance under pressure transient condition than check valves without these features. Air entrainment was found to affect both wave speed and reverse velocity. With the increase of the initial air void fraction in pipeline, the experiment results show that the wave speed was reduced, the reverse velocity was increased. The first peak pressure increased initially and then decreased with the increase of the initial air void fraction, the pressure surge periods were increased proportionally with air void fraction due to the greatly reduced wave speed. The study can be applied to help choosing suitable check valves for a particular pumping system.