Performance evaluation of a drinking water distribution system using hydraulic simulation software for the City of Oilton, Oklahoma

Scope and Method of Study. The scope of the study was to evaluate the performance of drinking water distribution system of the City of Oilton, Oklahoma using hydraulic simulation software and recommend changes based on the findings which would help the City of Oilton operate their system with more efficiency. This study was a part of a larger project, the goal of which was to develop a cost-effective Decision Support Tool to help the Rural Water Districts of Oklahoma in the long term planning of their water infrastructure. The project was funded by the Oklahoma Water Resources Research Institute. The hydraulic simulation software used for the study was WaterCAD V8i which is a licensed software distributed by the Bentley Systems. The methodology incorporated briefly, was to identify the potential consumers around the demand nodes in the distribution network and assign these nodes base demands depending upon the number of consumers around that node. The behavior of the system was observed under base flow, peak flow, fire flow and diurnal flow conditions and its performance was evaluated based on mainly two things: hydraulic conditions and water quality.;Findings and Conclusions. It was observed that the City of Oilton has very large storage tanks. The total storage capacity in the City is 950,000 gallons compared to a small average daily demand of 118,000 gallons. Since the supply of water to the town is based on gravity it was observed that only the top 20 ft of water volume in the tanks was used to maintain the normal working pressures above 30 psi. It was observed that the existing pump took excessively large time of 2 and ½ days to fill the tanks. Thus, the recommendation made to the City was to use a larger pump in order to fill the tanks at a faster rate. The other recommendations made were replacement of old pipes with new in order to have more flow through them and perform routine coliform tests to avoid state violations.