MadSci Network: Engineering |
Hi Richard, The relevant parameters in this problem will be: the quantity of air the water pressure whether the system is open or closed to the outside. Imagine a hose pipe with water running through it. If you stop the water flow a bubble of air can enter the open end and run back up the hose pipe. If you make an upward loop (inverted-u) or coil the hose so that the air bubble is trapped in the top of a loop (or a coil) it will trap any remaining water upstream. The air bubble will always rise to the top. If you turn the water flow on again, because the hose is open at one end it will push the water and air out of the pipe - if the flow is fast enough. There will probably be a bit of spluttering as the air exits but eventually a continuous flow of water will resume. This was an OPEN system. If the system is a CLOSED system of plumbing (as in a central heating system or a car's cooling system) and air is trapped in a loop it will block the water flow - an air lock. This is particularly so under conditions of low flowrate or low pressure as is ususally the case in a domestic setting. So why does it occur? The air bubble will always rise to the top of the loop and if it is a big bubble it will fill the diameter of the pipe at the top of the loop, it will effectively create a dam preventing the water from flowing over the dam (under normal domestic pressure conditions). And there the bubble will stay resisting the water flow if the force of the water flow is small compared to the force of the buoyancy keeping the air bubble at the top of the loop. Just try submerging a block of polystyene foam in a swimming pool or a bath - it really doesn't want to go under! So if the flow rate is low, and the bubble big, the buoyancy of the bubble will exceed the force of the flow and will resist it. In the situation we are examining, the trapped air bubble will be at (or close to) atmospheric pressure - that's about 1 Bar or almost 15 psi. 1 atmosphere pressure can hold up a column of about 780mm mercury or 34m of water! http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q3/101/demonstrations/water_bar ometer.h tml So how can the situation be resolved? If you could decrease the size of the bubble to enable the water to flow over the dam that would work. So you could try pressurising the system to increase the pressure: this will compress the bubble in the top of the loop and if this makes the bubble small enough so that it no longer fills the diameter of the pipe the water will begin to flow again. A smaller bubble is also less buoyant which will help. (If the resultant flow is high enough the bubble might even be dispersed by disolving in the water, or broken up and swept away by the turbulent flow.) Doubling the pressure will halve the volume of the bubble, quadruple the pressure and the volume will be a quarter (Boyle's Law). But will your pipes stand the pressure? Maybe not, so this will only work if the bubble is fairly small. What if the bubble is very big - such as in a long vertical run of pipe? Increasing the pressure just won't be practical. Running the pump (if any) on your system acts in a similar way by increasing the pressure on one side of the bubble, but in a closed system it reduces the pressure on the other side so all it really does is push the bubble over a bit and make the bubble unsymmetrical at the top of the loop i.e. on one side the water level will rise and on the other side it will fall but the bubble size will be much the same. However this might be just enough to raise the water level upstream sufficiently to enable the water to flow over the dam at the top of the loop and maybe the bubble will eventually be dispersed by turbulence in the flow. However the real solution for a big bubble is like the hose pipe example. Open the system at a drain valve and pump fresh water though the system and the water will push the bubble out - if the flow is fast enough. In a domestic setting a solution to an airlock in the hot water system is often to connect a hot tap to a mains pressure cold tap (using a length of hose). The mains pressure is always higher, often much higher, and the hot system will be an open system as there will be an always-open expansion outlet - or just open the other hot taps on the system. Irritating as an air lock may be in a domestic setting it's even more involved in an industrial setting where the quanitities of liquid may be enormous, dangerous (such as fuel), expensive or contaminating too - so you may not be able to flush it out down the drain, you may have to collect it - all of it. So the plumbing is an important part of the design of an industrial installation or of a vehicle. There are additional complications with vehicles, particularly fast vehicles such as aircraft where there are dynamic forces (G-forces) and the fuel can form its own bubbles by vapourising at low pressures (vapour locks) at altitude or due to characteristics of the system. This limits, for example, operation of an aircraft on ordinary petrol (gasoline) which vapour locks relatively easily so different fuels are available for aircraft - but that's another story. I hope this helps somewhat. Regards, Gavin Ward A "tap" in British English is the same as "faucet" in US English.
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