by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in Events & news — No Comments ↓

Almost 12,000 people have contracted choleraֲ since August in Zimbabwe, and the outbreak threatens to grow more direֲ  and deadlyֲ because the nation can’t pay for chemicals to treat water or for doctors to treat victims.

Residents in Harare were digging shallow holes in their yards in hopes of finding water. In some cases, nearby holes served as latrines. Other residents were getting water from polluted rivers.

“Just be strong. This will come to an end one day,” MDC Vice President Thokozani Khupe told cholera patients while visiting the Beatrice Infectious Diseases Hospital in the capital Monday.

The World Health Organization reports that 11,700 people in Zimbabwe have contracted the curable disease and 473 people have died from it since August — but MDC Health Secretary Henry Madzorera said the numbers are being underreported. He did not say by how much.

At Beatrice hospital in Harare, bodies were piled in the mortuary, awaiting relatives to collect them.

“We are receiving up to 15 bodies a day since the cholera outbreak. That is why we have started piling them like that. We cannot cope with the situation,” a hospital official said.

Source: CNN

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by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in EPANET related — No Comments ↓

EPANET-BAM 1.0 is an augmented version of EPANET 2.00.10, open-source software distributed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that models flow and contaminant transport through water distribution pipe networks.

EPANET-BAM uses a new Bulk Advective Mixing (BAM) model to predict concentrations of an aqueous solute at the outlets of cross junctions in a water quality simulation.

Recent experimental and computational studies have shown that solute mixing in pipe junctions is incomplete, contrary to the assumptions of the complete-mixing model used in the original EPANET. These studies found that fluid streams entering the junction tended to bifurcate, depending on the relative momentum of the fluid streams, which resulted in incomplete mixing. Click here to see more details of the computational fluid dynamics modeling.

The Bulk Advective Mixing (BAM) model honors this observed behavior by retaining bulk fluid momentum. It also neglects turbulent diffusivities and instabilities at the impinging interface. Therefore, Bulk Advective Mixing is a lower bound to the amount of mixing that can occur in a junction, whereas complete-mixing is an upper bound.

EPANET-BAM uses a mixing parameter to scale between the predictions of the complete-mixing and BAM model predictions.

Source: Sandia Corporation

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in EPANET related — 3 Comments ↓

From Zonums Solutions:

EPANET-MSX (EPA, 2007) is distributed as a stand-alone console application (command line application) In order to run it; the user must open a Command Prompt window in Windows, and navigate to the folder where epanetmsx.exe was saved. The syntax is:

>> epanetmx example.inp example.msx example.rpt

Where:

  • example.inp describes the hydraulic characteristics of the network
  • example.msx describes the species being simulated and the chemical reaction/equilibrium that governs their dynamics.
  • example.rpt is the name of file where the results will be written.

If the executable and input files were saved to different folders then the full path name would have to be added. The output is sent to a file and then it has to be opened in a text editor to see it.

MSX-GUI makes easier those previous steps for the user by integrating a graphical user
interface.

  • Browse files and folders: Select your files with a mouse click
  • Input file editor: Preview and edit input files directly from MSXGUI
  • Report: View the results, if you want to keep them save them as either text or export to Excel.

No need to know command line commands, no need to type file-names, no need to switch
between applications.

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in EPANET related — No Comments ↓

Lewis Rossman just announced the release on a New Maintenance Release of EPANET 2:

In preparation for the release of the Multi-Species Water Quality Modeling Extension to EPANET, we have just loaded a new maintenance update of EPANET, 2.00.11, to the new home page for EPANET: http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/wswrd/dw/epanet.html.

The only new features we added were to increase the allowable size of ID labels to 31 characters, to save the epanet2.ini settings file to the users Application Data folder so that the program is easier to deploy within networked environments, and to make several additional parameters available to the ENgetnodevalue function of the Toolkit that are required by the multi-species extension.

We have made a number of changes to the hydraulic engine code so that it can better handle combinations of control valves connected to one another. In particular, it now produces correct solutions for multi-valve regulator stations that have two or more PRVs connected in parallel. I want to thank Rod Allen of the Portland Water Bureau for his assistance with this. These changes have resulted in some networks requiring more trials than before to reach convergence, so keep this in mind when applying the new update to your existing models.

The full list of updates and bug fixes is available from the web site. A more complete overhaul of the program, including a fix for the scaling problem with the backdrop map, is still in preparation and may be ready for release by the end of the year.

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by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in General — No Comments ↓

We, as water resources engineers, have a lot of data for our water distribution systems and other projects we run. To maintain the data we use all kind of ways: databases, Excel files, AutoCAD drawings and more. There is a new tool that can help us keep our data in a more intuitive way. A 3D information organizer.

This new computer information organizer software lets you organize your information just the way you like in 3D space. You can have different areas for elements like pumps, valves, tanks and more. Each area in the 3d space you divide into sub sections for different network section and more.

Take a quick look at this demo video and consider signing up as beta-testers for the software.

See what other people wrote about 3d mindmapping software review.

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in General — 2 Comments ↓

The shower accounts for approximately 20% of indoor water use, and about 60% of hot water use. Older shower heads put out water at a rate of 4.5 to 8 gallons per minute (gpm). Low flow models operate at a range of 1.5 to 2.5 gpm. Low flow shower heads are available in a wide range of flow characteristics, so it should be possible to find a model that suits you. At the end of the day you will be saving water.

But water is not the only thing you will save. There is also CO2. You will save about 136 kg of CO2 each year just by installing low flow shower heads. If you also adjust your hot water heater from 60ֲ°C to about 50ֲ°C, you will save an additional 217 Kg of CO2 (you can find 20 simple tips fro lowering your home’s carbon footprint here).

At the end of the day, when you install a low flow shower heads and adjust your water temperature, you save water, CO2 and money!

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in EPANET related, General — 7 Comments ↓

Have you noticed the new web site EPANET.com? This new site states that it is:

Your one-stop source for software technology, news, and collaboration for the municipal water distribution modeling industry.

The site brings industry headlines, EPANet files download, few white papers, one book for sale and a registration form for a forum.

In the footer of the web page it is said that:

EPANET.com is not affiliated with or managed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency or any other governmental agency

So who is behind this web site?
Looking at the one book offered, “Advanced Water Distribution Modeling and Management “, the software link to “WaterCAD V8 XM“, the registration option to “WaterTalk” and the authors of the withe papers, it is clear that Haestad Methods (currently Bentley) is behind the site.

To make sure I have checked the domain registry for the owner of the epanet.com domain. Up until about a month ago the domain was registered under the name of Bentley. At this time the owner of the domain is hidden. I suspect that the owner did not change – but I could be wrong.

I have nothing against Bentley opening a site at EPANET.com but it would be only fair that they will disclose this fact.

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in EPANET related — No Comments ↓

During the last year, 277 posts were sent for 100 topics in the EPANet user-list.

The archive for all the posts can be found in the forums section.

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in EPANET related, Free software — 5 Comments ↓

Armando Barreto over at Zonum Solutions is looking for beta-testers for his new release – epa2kmz.

From Zonums Solutions web site:

Epa2kmz transforms NET Files to KMZ format. It allows to visualize Epanet projects in Google Earth, using the GE imagery as background.

Epa2kmz can transform the Network Map or the Network Map and the Hydraulic Analysis.

Epa2kmz wizard interface allows the user to navigate the process of transformation step by step, from the input file to the Google Earth visualization file. If the output visualization is not what you wanted, just click the back button and make the changes, no need to repeat to whole process.

Epa2kmz uses the EPANET Toolkit function library (Epanet2.dll) as the analysis engine. Also it incorporates functions and subroutines from the source code of EPANET.

by Elad SalomonsPosted on Posted in Announcements, EPANET related — 3 Comments ↓

From the EPA web site:

EPANET is used in homeland security research to model contamination threats to water systems. Historically, EPANET has been limited to tracking the dynamics of a single chemical transported through a network of pipes and storage tanks. EPANET did not consider interactions between bulk species in the water or the surface species fixed to the pipe wall.

Recently, the NHSRC released a research version of MS-EPANET (Multi-Species EPANET) that allows for the consideration of multiple interacting species in the bulk flow and on the pipe walls. The multi-species modeling extensions to EPANET include the following:

  1. The capability to model multi-species reactions in pipes and tanks when reactions involve bulk and surface species reactions.
  2. Modification of the EPANET input file format to enable it to read water quality dynamics expressions and to accommodate various other multi-specie interactions. This allows arbitrary mathematical expressions of reaction dynamics. The model then parses the expressions and stores and structures the data for efficient evaluation.
  3. The extension incorporates Newton-Raphson and Runge-Kutta algorithms into its water quality modules to solve the differential-algebraic equations that describe the reaction dynamics.
  4. Modification of the EPANET Programmer’s Toolkit to allow for specification of contaminant sources and qualities.

MS-EPANET will enable users to model free chlorine loss, the formation of disinfection byproducts, nitrification dynamics, disinfectant residuals, and adsorption on pipe walls. Homeland security researchers are particularly interested in modeling the fate and transport of contaminant threats in drinking water distribution systems.

The MS-EPANET software and Userג€™s Guide is now available to researchers and consultants as part of a beta-testing program. The Userג€™s Guide includes several example applications. By the end of 2006, a tested version of MS-EPANET will be freely available.