Author(s): Francois Nuc; Patrick Hendrick
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: In a Belgian research project called FlexWatter, funded by the Federal Public Service Economy and undertaken by some EERA Joint Program Hydropower active members, the research question was “Could the drinkable water network be a solution for electricity recovery? ”. To answer this question, Belgian universities and the Water Supply and Distribution Network (WSDN) company for the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR), called Vivaqua, gather their efforts to set up a case study based on the BCR WSDN. Since a few years, the drinkable WSDN is often seen as a potential energy system, not only for the water content it drives but also for the electricity it could generate and make available at some critical moments for the electricity grid. This paper aims to present and discuss a study done on the topology and the control of the WDN of the BCR, to compare the two networks (WSN & WDN) and to check if some electricity recovery would be possible from these networks. This paper is structured as follow. At first, a schematic view of a WSDN is given to show the basic structure of a WSN & a WDN separated from each other by storage devices (tanks / reservoirs). Then, energy recovery possibilities from these networks will be shown. Once the core concept of a WSDN and its energy recovery will have been explained, the real case study of the BCR WSDN will be introduced and discussed. From this real case, a Piping & Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) focusing on the split between WSD & WDN with different pressure levels will be given. Then the real data of the BCR WSDN will be discussed, to clearly show the difference of behavior between a WSN & a WDN. Based on the measured values on this BCR WSDN, conclusions were drawn on the type of hydraulic machines to be used: a turbine such as a Cross Flow together with a Pump-as-Turbine (PaT) will be needed to perform an efficient energy recovery from the WSDN. This paper will end with a short presentation of a test bench (located at Liege University Hydraulic Laboratory) that is currently built to better understand how to extract an optimal electrical energy out of the WSN and out of the WDN.
Year: 2024