Air in water pipeline and release through automatic air valve

It is recognized and proven that air is present in water pipelines. The reason for which air is present or entrained have been explained and covered in a different CSA technical bulletin, it is important to add though how do they move and dissolve into water to better understand the importance of air release valves. Air in solution doesnt not present an issue for engineering applications, only when due to pressure reduction and/or increase in temperature air is dissolved then problems arise. Small bubbles are forming and may gather in larger ones then moving to the top of the pipe. The movements of air pockets can be studied by means of the equations involved on the drag force (pushing air pockets on the same direction of the flow), on the friction force (acting against the flow) and buoyancy force facing upwards. The resultant brings out an equation stating whether air pockets and moving downwards , upwards or remain stuck and depends on the pipe DN, velocity , slope.. (described on a different CSA bulletin). Bubbles formed have a DN ranging usually from 1 to 5 mm It is important to determine the maximum % that can physically come out of solution, related to temperature and pressure, the lower the pressure the worse. So being conservative at atmospheric pressure and 20C the value is 2%, going to 3,2 % at 0C and 1,2% at 100C. This means that physically the amount of air to be release wont even be above 3%..

Another very important aspect is the velocity at which air is rising and gathered compared to the velocity of air release , sonic value. The rise velocity of small air bubbles depends on the gravitational acceleration, DN of the bubbles and kinematic viscosity. This means that given a certain time the amount of air accumulated is lower that the amount of air released. This is well proven on the CSA testing facility where the air pockets injections reproduce real time situation, and explains why air valves installed on water system dont release air all time expect for a limited amount of time during the day. Said that Lets make a quick example try to remain on the conservative side.

This is well proven on the CSA testing facility where the air pockets injections reproduce real time situation, and explains why air valves installed on water system dont release air all time expect for a limited amount of time during the day. Said that Lets make a quick example try to remain on the conservative side.

Air valves DN is chosen to allow the entrance of large volumes of air in order to prevent negative pressure conditions (picture taken from CSA tech literature)

The proper sizing should be done on each profile assuming pipe burst, dranage and considering the pipe resistance to bucking using the following formula (taken by CSA literature)

The following chart shows the air valve DN versus the pipe DN , as a rule of thumb , assuming CSA full bore air valves and applicabel to low gradient pipelines only. The charts shows a air % of 2.5, which cant be physically exceeded given what statet above. CSA is available for further info about the subject. (Taken by CSA tech literature)

Now coming to the air release performance of CSA air valves at 1 bar for example, we notice that a DN 80 (orifice 1,8 mm) will give around ,7 l/s, which is just the required 4,71 l/s therefore a large air release nozzle wont be needed Same thing for a DN 100 because the standar oriofice size is 1,8 mm too, but we can house a nozzle up to mm (it works up to bar) at 10 bar assuring always more than the , l/s. This calculations are extremely conservative because they do not consider that the velocity at which air is accumulated is much lower that the air speed during air release