WaterCad in San Paulo

WaterCAD Helps to Identify Optimal Hydraulic Strategy, Solving Water Supply Issues in a Hydraulic Modeling Project Providing Continuous Water Supply to 240,000 Inhabitants

Sabesp MA is a mixed-capital company that provides water and sewage services to the 364 municipalities in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It is considered one of the largest water and sewage service providers in the world, supplying potable water to 27.7 million people.

Two pump stations, Vila Bela and Jardim da Conquista, pump water from the Rio Claro aqueduct, each through an 800 mm pipe. The Vila Bela pump station supplied the Jardim da Conquista tank with an average flow of 708 lps, and the Jardim da Conquista pump station supplied the Jardim São Pedro tank with an average flow of 388 lps. This Jardim da Conquista pump station suffered electrical shutdowns due to failures in the supply of the power utility. Each time this occurred, staff had to be onsite to restart the pumps and electrical panels of the pump station.

When this occurred at night, it was unsafe to send Sabesp personnel to the pump station because of the pump station's proximity to dangerous areas. With the inability to restart the pump station at night, approximately 240,000 people would remain without water supply until the next day. Using WaterCAD, Sabesp was able to develop an optimal solution that not only provided continuous water supply to the inhabitants, but also saved BRL 700,000 in energy costs.

Finding the optimal solution

Sabesp initially considered disabling the Jardim da Conquista pump station, and transferring all pumping to the Vila Bela pump station, which would directly supply the Jardim São Pedro tank and as a result, supply the Jardim da Conquista tank. However, to better understand the operation of the entire system, Sabesp first performed hydraulic modeling of the system using WaterCAD. This enabled them to develop an alternative supply strategy. They determined that by constructing a 17,696 m3oversized water tank at Jardim São Pedro, if the pumps shutdown in the evening the tank would have sufficient autonomy to ensure water supply until the next morning.

WaterCAD helped determine the operating conditions of the existing pumps and if they were working within operating range. Sabesp hydraulic modelers were then able to test the setup of new pumps that would best comply with a flow rate of 390 lps in regular operating conditions, as well as a flow rate of 800 lps in the case of nighttime pump shutdown, so that the water tank could supply the population for up to 12 hours.

With WaterCAD, engineers were also able to find out how long the pumps would need to fill up the new tank before nightfall, in preparation for possible evening power outages. With this hydraulic modeling work, Sabesp reduced the time it would have taken for the Jardim São Pedro tank to reach its increased volume of 17,696 m3, fromseven days andthree hours to an average of 16 hours, increasing the water supply system reliability. In order to achieve this, the other tank, Jardim da Conquista, was also replaced, with doubled capacity from 4,347 cum3to 8,694 m3, increasing operational security.

Source: WorldPumps

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