This article will define a business case for achieving significant rotating equipment maintenance and energy cost reduction at industrial and municipal facilities.
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Vertically mounted pumps can resonate as a total structure in a "rocking" mode, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 below. This is one of the toughest unsolved vibration problems at several plants.
Explore differential pressure, electromagnetic, vortex and swirl, and variable area (rotameters).
Yuba County Water Agency in Marysville, Calif., recently chose a wireless system as a solution for a water pump problem. Here are some of benefits they discovered.
Use of disposable components in product downstream processing and final fill operations is increasing as technology improves for performing these steps in a single-use mode. There is a high demand for systems that support single-use purification, formulation and filling operations.
In recent years, adjustable frequency AC drives have become increasingly popular as they provide an efficient, direct method of controlling the speed of the most rugged and reliable of prime movers, the squirrel cage motor. They provide a spectrum of benefits for a broad range of applications.
On July 16 last year, a high-speed centrifugal pump failed catastrophically at a large refinery in South America, causing production losses and costing a substantial amount of money for repairs. The inboard bearing of the pump lost lubrication, overheated, and seized up.
Since municipal codes frequently deal with the most crucial areas of public life-covering the safety of life and property-it is understandable that preference is given to tools and methods that are "tried and true" over ones that are untested. The challenge becomes how to take advantage of new advances in technology while recognizing the importance of maintaining an uncompromising level of safety and security. The answer can lie in close cooperation between officials who champion the integrity of the municipal code system and individuals experienced in the implementation of innovative technologies.
You have probably noticed that there are several camps out there when it comes to centrifugal pump applications involving variable frequency drives (VFDs). One group believes that every pump should have one, while another thinks that they should be banned altogether. And, of course, there is the middle ground that says it depends upon the pump and application.
With the wide use of variable frequency drives in the pump industry and increasing unit size, it is becoming more difficult to design mechanical systems free from natural frequencies within operating speed range. If such an occurrence is allowed in the field, a resulting resonance condition threatens to significantly impact performance and longevity of the equipment.
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This article will define a business case for achieving significant rotating equipment maintenance and energy cost reduction at industrial and municipal facilities.
Pumps are sent to rebuilding and remanufacturing companies because buying new can be expensive and require long lead times. For instance, a 39 in diameter, 1,000 lb bronze impeller may cost $28,000 and take many weeks to deliver. In these cases, the impellers involved in an overhaul are often built back up to the required specifications and rebalanced.
An automated monitor provides a live, continuous picture of exactly what is happening inside a turbine for protection, prediction, performance monitoring, and integration of the data with process control.
With the old mechanical displacers, level fluctuations ran 4-in to 5-in with a lot of hysteresis and frequent failures, causing operators to control at much higher levels than were optimal. New magnetic technology is changing all that. Here's how.
Wireless technology is enabling INEOS Köln GmbH (Cologne, Germany) to detect blocked filters in polyethylene pellet transportation tubes that can lead to production downtime at its plant in Cologne. INEOS produces polyethylene, which is used for a broad range of products including pipes, packages, films and coating. Polyethylene pellets ready for customer use are transferred to the plant's silo store through pneumatic conveying systems. Pellets are entrained in streams of air and effectively "blown" from one location to another. The incoming air is filtered to prevent any pollution of the final product.
Active Front End (AFE) drives use two power sections. An active rectifier is used to minimize the amount of harmonic distortion reflected to the power grid by drawing nearly sinusoidal current from the power grid. Standard 6-pulse rectifiers used in most drives create harmonics (e.g.5th, 7th, etc.) that can generate anywhere from 30 to 100 percent current distortion. The active rectifier used in the AFE drive creates cancelling harmonics that effectively eliminate those that would be created in a standard 6-pulse drive.
Low-cost additions help bottle maker manage compressed air use and energy costs on a shoestring.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), a municipally owned utility, provides roughly four million residents in southeastern Michigan with an average of 710 million gallons of water per day. Its main wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)-among the largest single-site WWTPs in the United States-collects and treats residential, commercial and industrial wastewater for 76 municipal communities.
Monitoring vibration—a valuable tool in predictive/preventive maintenance programs
Even though control technology has become an integral part of many pumping systems, over half of our readers have not expressed much interest in pump controls. I think I know why - today's controls are simply not as intuitively understandable as they once were. Who wants to read about the advantages of PID control without a basic understanding of P, I, and D itself?
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In this multi-part series, we will investigate several aspects of centrifugal pump efficiency.
First of Five Parts
Since the original publication of this draft standard in the January 2008 issue of Pumps & Systems, I have received feedback, encouragement, numerous questions and criticism. The draft listed three basic levels of repair.
The McGraw-Hill scientific dictionary [5] states that a volute is "a spiral casing for a centrifugal pump... designed so that speed will be converted to pressure."
