HYDRAULIC SEPARATORS
Simplified installation with hydraulic separators
Mark Mogey, Head of OEM Sales at Altecnic.
THE CALEFFI 548 AND 549 SERIES HYDRAULIC SEPARATORS BRING A COMBINATION APPROACH TO ANY HEADER SITUATION AND ARE BOTH IDEAL SOLUTIONS FOR SIMPLIFYING INSTALLATION, WHILST ALSO PROVIDING MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS...
M any hydronic systems use compact boilers as their heat source, with these boilers having much higher flow resistance than cast iron boilers. If such a boiler is simply substituted for a low flow resistance boiler, problems are likely to develop,
that operate at one time, the worse this bottlenecking effect is. The resulting drop in flow through individual zone circuits may create under-heating, which will likely lead to complaints of inadequate heat delivery in some zones. To solve this issue, a designer should look to use hydraulic separation. When hydraulic separation between circuits is present, the designer can correctly think of each circuit as if it were a stand-alone entity and can design it accordingly. This not only simplifies system analysis, but it also prevents the previously described flow interference problems. HYDRAULIC SEPARATION AND OPERATING PRINCIPLES When a single system contains a primary production circuit, with its own pump (or more than one), and a secondary user circuit, with one or more distribution pumps,
most notably interference between simultaneously operating pumps.
The designer of such a system might assume that each zone circuit develops a flow based on the flow resistance of its piping and the circulation pump in that circuit. This thinking treats each zone circuit as if it were a “stand- alone circuit,” unaffected by its neighbouring circuits. This oversimplification ignores the fact that the total flow of all zone circuits must pass through the high resistance heat source. The latter will act as a flow “bottleneck” and significantly reduce the flow within each zone circuit. The more zone circuits
“The hydraulic separator creates a zone with low head loss, enabling the primary and secondary circuits to be hydraulically independent of each other.”
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72 | PLUMBING & HEATING MAGAZINE
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