Influence of Butterfly and Gate Valves Upstream Large Water Meters

The research presented was conducted to quantify the effects of butterfly and gate valves located upstream water meters with diameters larger than 50 mm. Errors caused by these valves can have an enormous financial impact taking into consideration that a small percentage of variation in the error of a large meter is typically related to a significant volume of water. The uncertainty on the economic impact that a valve installed upstream of a medium size water meter leads to many water utilities to oversize the meter chambers in order to mitigate the potential negative errors. Most manufacturers approve their meters for a specific flow disturbance sensitivity class according to the standard ISO 4064-1:2018. Under this classification, a correct operation of the meters requires a certain length of straight section of pipe upstream the meter. However, this classification of the meters cannot consider all types of flow perturbances. For this study, two types of valves, butterfly and gate, were tested upstream ten brand-new water meters from six different manufacturers constructed in four different metering technologies: single-jet, Woltmann, electromagnetic and ultrasonic. In each meter unit was tested at five flow rates, from minimum to the overload flow rates. The tests were conducted with valves set in different orientations, closing degrees, and upstream distances from the water meters under study. The research shows that the valves used can produce significant deviations in the measuring errors with respect the errors found for undistorted working conditions.