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posted by Fnord666 on Friday February 28 2020, @08:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-hammer-time dept.

A better way to detect underground water leaks:

You can delay irrigating the lawn or washing the car all you want, but to really make a big dent in water savings we need to stop water waste long before the precious resource ever reaches our taps.

An estimated 20 to 50 percent of water is lost to leaks in North America's supply system -- a major issue as utilities contend with how to sustain a growing population in an era of water scarcity.

"People talk about reducing the time you take showers, but if you think about 50 percent of water flowing through the system being lost, it's another magnitude," said study author Daniel Tartakovsky, a professor of energy resources engineering in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

In a move that could potentially save money and billions of gallons of water, Tartakovsky, along with Abdulrahman Alawadhi from the University of California, San Diego, have proposed a new way to swiftly and accurately interpret data from pressure sensors commonly used to detect leaks.

In addition to water utilities, Tartakovsky said the method could also be applied to other industries that use pressure sensors for leak detection, such as in oil and natural gas transmission networks that run under the sea and pose additional environmental hazards.

The research was published online Feb. 12 in the journal Water Resources Research.

Abdulrahman Alawadhi, Daniel M. Tartakovsky. Bayesian Update and Method of Distributions: Application to Leak Detection in Transmission Mains. Water Resources Research, 2020; DOI: 10.1029/2019WR025879


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday February 28 2020, @02:49PM (6 children)

    by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday February 28 2020, @02:49PM (#964119) Journal

    I'm looking at you, NY City and Paris, France, just as much as at Little-Ndongwe-behind-the-woods, Congo.

    In many places, water is a renewable resource. It rains and the reservoirs fill up. Then it doesn't really water if half goes to waste. Of course it's a different matter if people are depleting ground water.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday February 28 2020, @02:50PM

    by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday February 28 2020, @02:50PM (#964120) Journal

    it doesn't really *matter* ...

    A Freudian slip, if there ever was one.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @03:15PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @03:15PM (#964130)

    It still matters because of water treatment efforts. Pumping the same water through the treatment plant once is better than doing it twice, even with all else being equal. Technically, at least. Power needs to be generated, pumps decay and break, chemicals are added, and at the very, very, very least some filter needs to be replaced regularly. A water plant with a 50% loss is running at twice the capacity (personnel!) it needs, pissing away half ist operating cost. Because nobody can't be assed to replace the piping.

    Of course, improvements in the piping may not be cost effective vs. treatment costs OVER A 4-YEAR HORIZON (listen to the sweet political election bells!). Which brings us right back to this thread's initial post about a clue-by-four, methinks. Because spreading the same piping costs over 40 years (quite possible for infrastructure) would definitely work. Technically. Not politically though.

    • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday February 28 2020, @03:24PM

      by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday February 28 2020, @03:24PM (#964131) Journal

      Because spreading the same piping costs over 40 years (quite possible for infrastructure) would definitely work. Technically. Not politically though.

      If the numbers are right, I agree. Someone should make plans and wait for the next call for "shovel-ready projects". [wikipedia.org] Then the money is there. Our kids or grand kids can pay the bill.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Friday February 28 2020, @04:52PM (2 children)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 28 2020, @04:52PM (#964159) Journal

    In many places, water is a renewable resource. It rains and the reservoirs fill up.

    Actually that's usually just a low single-digit percentage which is truly renewable. Otherwise the water circulation is only within a watershed and as long as the water stays within the watershed, it can be considered renewable. However, once the pipes cross a watershed, the leaks are depeleting source. That includes water theft via bottling companies too not just municipal pipes.

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    • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday February 28 2020, @05:13PM (1 child)

      by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday February 28 2020, @05:13PM (#964179) Journal

      What are you talking about? The whole earth is one giant watershed.

      • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday February 28 2020, @06:42PM

        by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 28 2020, @06:42PM (#964262) Journal

        The hydrologic cycle [uiuc.edu]: rain flows downhill. Some of it soaks deep into the ground the rest runs into lakes though much of it gets absorbed into forests and other vegetation before getting to the lakes. Then it evaporates from the lakes an rains again, flowing down hill, ad infinitum. Most of that stays in the same geographic area, as delineated by high points and weather zones. However, if you pump it or truck it over the dividing high points, then you run out rather quickly. It happens faster with the subsurface resources as they are much slower to recharge. Like is happening in California. However it can happen just as well with the lakes, rivers, and streams if they are drained at a fast enough rate. Like is happening in the northern midwest.

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        Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.