LittleInch - I'm trying to get 5 GPM per tank. I have 2 tanks, so 10 GPM overall. I will have a tee at the tom of the pump, with a ball valve and a return directly back to the tank, that way the contractor can increase/decrease the flow back into the tank to alter the pressure in the line.
Snickster - Awesome image, thanks for sharing that. This will be post-settled wastewater, so the characteristics would be virtually identical. I don't quite understand the differences between the 2 square edged, would you mind explaining why I would use the c 0.61 square edged and not the other? Honestly, all of these seem somewhat viable, minus sharp edge and well rounded. I'm just trying to understand a little better the differences.
Yeah, the differential pressure has been my point of confusion. I assumed head upstream will be whatever pressure I have at the orifice, which I will determine myself, so this would be the variable that I would use to determine my Q. My downstream pressure, I assume, would be 0?
I will use the setup described above, so I can easily specify "20 psi at the orifice" or whatever is needed and the contractor can easily obtain that by allowing more of less wastewater to pump back into the pump tank.
Yeah, the main head loss will come from pumping out of the tank, which will be around 7' or 3 psi.
Seems like the formula gets a little trickier (from an algebraic perspective obviously) if the orifice is larger, so keeping it smaller simplifies things. Just curious though, any idea why the formula changes based on d1/d2? Doesn't seems like sqrt(1/(1-....)) really changes much at all regardless. I've solved for h, and I end up with around 9, and I assume "feet of liquid" is just total head in feet. If I had 9 feet of head at that orifice, this pump would end up producing about 105 GPM, and I need 10. Really, I need to have about 19 feet of head at the orifice, so that means I need to change my orifice size. I am starting to see how this is a sliding scale, or multiple sliding scales! I think the solution here is to keep resizing the orifice until I end up with 10 GPM at ~19' of head. Idk, this is making my head spin a little and I've been at this all day, so I might need to rest my brain on this overnight lol. I've included my calcs in the attached excel sheet if you're interested in how I came up with it
Thank y'all so much for the help by the way, this is incredible! I would be lost otherwise.
Edit: I've edited this so many times now, but I can't stop thinking about this. I'm losing about 7' of head to the orifice currently, but most of that is loss pumping out of the tank, and my starting point is basically right past that point. There's also virtually 0 loss to the orifice, so I can assume my only loss is that at the orifice. If I were to put a pressure gauge directly before the orifice, it would need to read 9 feet (I should convert this to psi, but I'm just keeping it simple for now). So all the contractor would have to do is adjust the main ball valve that controls how much flow goes back into the tank into the gauge reads 9'. I think I've cracked the case! What do you think?