BERMAD Irrigation Blog

BERMAD IR-172 Flow Control and Pressure Reducing Valve has already proven to be an effective and reliable solution. Moreover, it is an essential component for pressure and flow control installed in the Bermad Outlet Management System (or OMS), which is an irrigation control head installed across many projects in India supplying irrigation water for farmers' associations.

Adapting irrigation infrastructure to changing needs in the world of agriculture

Today, as the world of agriculture is undergoing rapid modernization and everyone is talking about agrotechnology, there are still areas where it is necessary to close a gap of hundreds of years in irrigation infrastructure.

The Olmos project in Peru, is a mega project diverting water from the Huancabamba river. The project was a joint venture between the Netafim drip irrigation company which designed and executed the project, Valmont Industries, which supplied the center-pivot irrigation systems, and BERMAD which designed and supplied unique automatic hydraulic solutions for this project.

Climate change is already causing continued drought in Morocco. That’s why the country has allocated around 80% of its water resources to combat desertification, a major problem in a country where a significant portion of GDP comes from agriculture. The government’s ‘Green Morocco’ project is focused on undergoing irrigation modernization in large agricultural areas — mainly a transition from sprinklers to drip irrigation.

In a recent BERMAD webinar, “Pressure Sustaining, Circulation and Relief in Irrigation Systems”, our Application Engineer Sarit Hatzbany took a closer look at pressure sustaining principles of operation and the key differences between relief, circulation and inline sustaining valves.

When we need to limit the flow using hydraulic methods (as opposed to electronic methods), the flow is not continuously measured & sampled (only during setting). Therefore, pilots are designed to hydraulically sense the differential of pressure or force/velocity associated with the varying flow.

What are Flow Control Valves?

Flow control valves are designed to maintain a constant pre-set maximum flow regardless of fluctuating demand or varying system pressure. Flow limiting is required at the outlets from main systems to consumers like secondary systems (main line to hydrant line; hydrant line to distribution line), reservoirs, etc. in order to protect the supplying system from over consumption.

Nowadays, more and more irrigation system designers are choosing plastic over metal components. Bermad’s IR-100 Series is at the leading edge of this trend. This innovative line of engineered plastic control valves provides unique benefits & features compared to other standard control valves.