Design of a water flow and usage meter
S Botha, LA Meijsen, GP Hancke and BJ Silva
Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
Corresponding author: silva.bjc@gmail.com
Abstract— South Africa could potentially face a shortage of
water in the near future. Efficient and low cost methods to
determine water usage are vital to help prevent this issue. Flow
and usage meters are necessary to ensure accurate usage
readings. An electromagnetic flow meter and a water usage meter
were developed. The designed module can be implemented on a
standard water pipe at residential areas. The developed system
harvests energy using a solar panel.
Keywords— water flow meter; water usage; water supply.
I. INTRODUCTION
By the year 2020 South Africa could experience a critical
shortage of water as a result of water demand from consumers
exceeding the water supply [1]. Therefore water utilities and
municipalities would be required to perform appropriate
planning and water management to avoid water usage
restrictions in the future. Measurements from flow meters
allow the water utility to make day-to-day decisions and long-
term planning for the future, as well as charging customers for
water used. Measurements are done by employees of the water
utility and/or municipality. This introduces a human error
factor which could result in incorrect charges of customers and
also affect future planning. Thus the problem addressed in this
work was to eliminate the human error through sending the
water usage measurement directly to the water utility, hence
improving the service delivered to customers. Furthermore,
Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks
(WSNs) [2] are ubiquitous and make lot of different
monitoring applications possible [3], especially in harsh
environments, where water usage has to be monitored as well
[4], [5]. The hardware platforms needed to develop these
applications need to be taken into consideration as well [6],
[7].
Municipalities and water utilities generally own read and
maintain water meters. Currently employees are required to
drive to each and every meter owned in order to collect water
usage reading ideally on a monthly basis. Positive
displacement (PD) meters are usually used as they are
relatively accurate at low to moderate flow rates, which is the
case in residential and small commercial applications, and
they are economical.
However, due to the rotating parts and seals inside the flow
meter, as well as the built in strainer, some maintenance is
required from time to time to guarantee accuracy as these
978-1-5090-3474-1/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE 6211
meter generally only have a five year life expectancy. The
magnetic flow meter is the next generation of meters that the
municipalities and water utilities will employ as the life
expectancy is much greater and these meters which are located
outside the pipe, thus there is no maximum pressure and head
loss to consider. The meter that designed in this paper is an
ultrasonic flow meter. Ultrasonic flow meters are usually used
in industrial, sewage and medical fields. Their non-invasive
feature makes them popular for pipe systems that are large and
already existing. The problems addressed in this work are the
design of an electromagnetic water flow meter and a water
usage meter that harvests energy from the sun. The proposed
system is completely independent of any external power
sources.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: some
background to put the proposed system in context is presented
in Section II; an overview of the proposed system is given in
Section III; the design and implementation are discussed in
Section IV; the results are presented and discussed in Section
V; and in Section VI, the paper is finally concluded.
II. BACKGROUND
A. Electromagnetic flow meters
An electromagnetic flow meter uses the principle of
Faraday’s law of induction [8] which states that a potential
difference can be measured across two electrodes in a fluid
when a magnetic field is induced perpendicularly to the
electrodes. The electrodes have to be placed in the pipe and
need to be in contact with the fluid in the pipe. When there is
an electromagnetic field across the pipe the ions in the fluid
separate, into positive and negative ions, and induce a potential
difference across the electrodes. Therefore the fluid in the pipe
has to be a conductive fluid. To produce an electromagnetic
field across the pipe a Helmholtz coil will be implemented. A
Helmholtz coil is used in order to create a uniform
electromagnetic field across the pipe, to ensure that the ions in
the liquid will be separated evenly. This is important as
complete separation of the ions in the liquid is needed, to
measure the correct potential difference across the electrodes.
In order to reduce power consumption the magnetic field will
be driven with a DC signal instead of the conventional AC
signal.
To produce an electromagnetic field across the pipe a
Helmholtz coil can be implemented as in [9]. A Helmholtz coil
can be used in order to create a uniform electromagnetic field
across the pipe, to ensure that the ions in the liquid will be
separated evenly. This is important as complete separation of
the ions in the liquid is required, to measure the correct
potential difference across the electrodes. Helmholtz coils are
often used with low frequency requirements, for example it is
used for treatment of soybeans in [10]. Such a coil is illustrated
in Fig. 1.
and its error accuracy curve for the V110 KSM volumetric
meter can be found in the datasheet in reference [12].
III. OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM
Fig. 2 shows the functional diagram of the water usage
meter and Fig. 3 shows the concept design of the final circuit of
the water flow meter.

Fig. 1. Example of a Helmholtz coil [8].

A Helmholtz coil consists of two coils placed parallel to one

another. Each coil has the same diameter and the same number
of turns. Both coils are wound in the same direction (wound in
series) and the copper windings continue from the first coil Fig. 2. Block diagram of proposed water usage meter.
onto the second coil. The windings on the coil were wound
with an insulated copper wire. A magnetic field is created The system was powered by a renewable energy source
when a charge is in motion, where charge is the current in the Functional unit (FU) 1. The output of the renewable energy
coils. The electromagnetic field is generated between the coils source (FU1) was stored in a storage battery (FU2). In order to
where the linearity and strength of the magnetic field is power the processing unit (FU4), the flow meter (FU5) and its
directly related to the distance between the two coils and the circuitry and the communication module (FU7), power
current through them. converters (FU3) was required to deliver the correct voltage
and current ratings using the storage battery’s (FU2) output as
B. Water usage meters input power. Data was received and send from the processing
There are many types of flow meters used to measure the unit (FU4) to the flow meter (FU5) through an engineering
flow rate of the liquids and gasses; however this literature interface, where the processing unit (FU4) processed and
study will focus on three flow meters that are able to measure manipulated the data received in order to convert measured
low to moderate flow rates of cold potable water, which is the flow rates to the amount of water used. The flow meter (FU5)
case in residential and small commercial applications, was investigated and a suitable meter was designed and
typically between the ranges of 15 l/h (liters per hour) to 4,500 manufactured. The user interface (FU6) ideally consisted of a
l/h. push button and a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen and
Municipalities and water utilities prefer to use the PD enabled the user to read off the water usage measurements
meters, also known as volumetric meter, as these meters are locally. The processing unit (FU4) also 4 communicated with
relatively accurate at low to moderate flow rates, and they are the communication module (FU7) to send water usage
rather inexpensive. The PD meter measures the volume of the measurements a recipient (FU8).
fluid, which is accomplished by its “bucket” shaped design.
Most PD meters consist of multiple “buckets” that are both
valved and geared together, so that whilst some buckets are
filling up, the others are emptying. The driving force of this
action comes from the stream as a pressure drop.
There are many different types of PD meters used to
measure fluid which include reciprocating piston, rotating
discs, sliding vanes, rotational vanes, oval gear, nutating discs,
metering pumps and lobed impellers. However, in this text,
the volumetric meter with semi-positive rotary piston type
(V110T KSM) will be the focus. This PD meter caters for
flow ranges of 15 l/h to 7000 l/h at which readings meet the
criteria for accuracy of water meters of WWA which states
that meter’s measured error at low flow should not exceed 5%,
and at high flow should not exceed 2% [11]. The typical flow Fig. 3. Concept circuit design of magnetic flow meter.

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 The processing unit is a microcontroller. The
microcontroller is both the central controlling unit as well as
the time difference collection module. The microcontroller
selected for this work was the PIC32MX795F512L, as it has
the ability to realize functions such as generating, collecting
and processing the signals, accounting the time of the forward
(downstream) and reverse (upstream) direction transmission,
calculating the flow rate, as well as communicating with
external communication link and user interface.
IV. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
This section contains information on the design and
implementation of the proposed system.
A. Electromagnetic flow meter design
When designing the Helmholtz coil the magnetic field in
the center of the coil is of the utmost importance as this would
be the maximum magnetic field generated. Using Equation 1
and setting z = 0, as the magnetic field in the center is of
concern, the following formula is:
8 0 IN
 3
 (1)
r it’s electrically conductive. The transducers are found in the
5 2
where β is the magnetic field strength in the center of the two
coils (in T), µ0 is the permeability of air (in Henrys/m), r is the
coil radius (in m), I is the current (in A) and N is the number of
turns per coil. Equation 1 gives the total strength of magnetic
field induced by both the coils. The magnetic field produced by
the Helmholtz coil is directly proportional to the number of
turns on each coil and the amount of current sent through the
coils. The final design of the Helmholtz coil is illustrated
below.
Fig. 4. Final design of the Helmholtz coil.
B. Water usage meter design
The time-transit UFM is made up of the transducers and the
main measuring unit. The transducers selected will directly
influence the stability and accuracy of the meter, thus it is an
important factor to consider. When looking at the physics of
sound wave, it is evident that there are factors to consider,
when choosing an ultrasonic transducer. The type of transducer
selected is thus dependent of the ultrasonic frequency required
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to propagate along the path length in the measured flow. The
ultrasonic frequency typically used to measure the flow of fluid
ranges between 0.4 to 2 MHz. For a short propagation path
length the transducer frequency selected should be in the high
relative high range [13].
The ultrasonic transducers that were selected had both
transmitting and receiving properties, and are waterproof, thus
the impedance matching layer is matched with that of water.
The transducers also have a center frequency of 1.2 MHz, and
bandwidth of 0.1MHz. As mentioned, the ultrasound intensity
is reduced when the beam spread increases and with a wide
bandwidth. From the datasheet the beam angle is 8 degrees
which was assumed to be the beam spread. The features of the
transducer include that its maximum operating temperature is
and that its maximum pressure it is 1.6 MPa. Additionally from
the datasheet its minimum parallel impedance is Ω and its
electrostatic capacity is pF. These impedance values were
assumed to be the impedance of the transducer during both the
transmitting and receiving operation mode. Furthermore, the
transducer is threaded at the end to ensure that transducer is
secure and stable when inserted in the structure of the flow
meter, and the casing of the transducer is made of copper, thus
datasheet in reference [14].
As mentioned, in the near field the sound field’s state of
uniformity is affected by the constructive and destructive
interference. This is not considered as the optimal field to
operate in, thus the distance (N) from the face of the transducer
where the near field end and the far field begins should be
calculated. This was calculated for the transducer as follows:
d 2 F 0.0142 1.2 106
N   0.0397m  4cm (2)
4c 4 1480
Thus the far field is located approximately 4cm away from
the face of the transducer where a uniform and intense wave is
developed. The piping structure of the time-transit UFM was
designed such that the distance at which the far field begins
will be the same distance between the transducer and the inlet
and outlet for flow.
The piping structure was designed so that the inlet and
outlet for water are both at an angle of 45 degree angle to the
sensor path, and that the ultrasonic beam travelling distance is
approximately 310 mm. The piping structure should ideally be
made out of standard steel piping and electrically insulated
bushers are required to isolate the transducers from the piping
structure. Although, the piping structure used in the designed
flow cell transit-time UFM was copper piping due to the 45
degree elbows that were available only in copper. In Fig. 5 the
piping structure of the designed flow meter with dimensions is
shown. The inlet and outlet’s length is times the pipe’s
diameter, as that is the suggested length to stabilize the flow
before it enters the sensor path.

Fig. 5. Designed flow cell time-transit UFM with dimensions.
C. Energy harvesting
A 10W solar panel is connected to a battery, which is
charged during the day when exposed to sunlight. This serves
as the energy harvesting component of the system, illustrated
in Fig, 6.
Fig. 6. Illustration of energy harvesting component of the system.
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Flow meter accuracy
The objective of this experiment was to test and verify that
the flow meters accuracy meets the proposed accuracy
specification of 85% or more, over a range of flow rates. The
experimental setup and testing equipment is seen in Fig. 7
below. By adjusting the flow rate of the water with the valve
that is attached to the pump for specific time interval, the
designed meter’s accuracy was tested over a range of flow
rates. This was done by comparing the reading of the designed
meter to that of the V110 KSM volumetric meter that is used as
a control meter.
Fig. 7. Experimental setup.
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B. Energy harvesting results
Fig. 8 shows the measured potential difference across the
terminals of the battery, whilst the battery was charged using
the designed charging circuitry. The black dotted line is the
trend curve of the rate of charge. Between 09:00 and 11:30 the
battery had a 30W TV as a load and from 11:30 until 17:00
there was no load connected to the battery.
Fig. 8. Measured voltage across the battery.
Regarding the battery charging circuit; when the battery
was under load almost no charging of the battery occurred, but
no charge was lost. No charge of the battery was lost, because
there was a voltage gain from 12.4V to 12.5V (seen in Fig. 8)
whilst the load was connected. When the load was
disconnected after 11:30 the charging rate increased and was
more effective. Because the voltage across the terminals of the
battery increased, the rate of charging decreased as this
decreased the charging current.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper presented the design and implementation of a water
flow and usage meter. A Helmholtz coil was designed and
built for the purpose of producing an electromagnetic field
across the water pipe. Two electrodes were placed in the water
pipe 900 to the magnetic field in the water pipe. The signal
received from each of the electrodes went to a small signal
analysis circuit. In the small signal analysis circuitry the
signals underwent filtering to remove unwanted noise from the
signal and underwent amplification. After the amplification
stages an ADC was done to the signal with the use of
software. The ADC of the signal was then manipulated to
relate the received value from the electrodes to the rate of flow
of the water. In future work we could consider how to better
interconnect these meters to wireless sensor networks, which
would allow for remote monitoring, device localisation [15],
while also considering how to secure device computation, e.g.
using tamper proof tokens [16], communication [17] and
location [18].
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