First, a little background. I am an engineering student who has been working this summer on designing and building a greenhouse. As someone with limited fluid dynamics experience, the irrigation and plumbing has proved rather challenging.
So what I currently have is nutrient rich water being gravity fed from one side of the facility to the other, so the pressure in the pipe is negligible. What I am trying to accomplish is have this line of water feed an irrigation timer (which is basically a closed valve which opens at programmable intervals) to water plants.
The issue I am encountering is that an irrigation timer requires a MINIMUM of 5 psi, often more, to function properly. Because this water is gravity fed and not from the water supply, it does not have the sufficient pressure.
The only solution I could think of was adding a pump along this low pressure section, and with nowhere for the water to go, pressure would build up. Trying to apply some fluids I used Bernoulli and then continuity to calculate the discharge of a pump which could supply the proper pressure to operate the timer. However I do not think what I did is correct both due to some misunderstandings in the physics and how pumps operate.
I am not trying to ask for design specifics, but this problem has opened up a lot of questions. What happens to a pump when the discharge is closed? Where does that energy go? How can you build pressure in a pipe? How does the diameter of pipe effect this sort of situation? Understanding these questions seem important in really synthesizing the basic fluids I have learned and building on it for future courses and careers.
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