Title: Development of a Smart Pumping System

In today’s global economy, process plants are under constant pressure to reduce costs. Users can no longer afford their attempts to make pumps bulletproof by upgrading component specifications. The development of a smart pumping system was fostered by a challenge from a major chemical user to reduce the total cost of pump ownership. A smart pumping system was successfully developed that can react and adjust itself to system changes without manual intervention. The system is fault tolerant by virtue of the control software, which will not permit the pump to operate outside user specified ranges, or under conditions that typically cause pumps to fail. A variable speed controller can match pump output to exact system head requirements, without the need for energy consuming control valves. The smart pumping system can significantly reduce all major components of life cycle cost. Field-testing proceeded without incident after initial installation problems were resolved. INTRODUCTION To survive in the global marketplace, process plants are under constant pressure to move liquids both reliably and inexpensively. Today many plants have cut back on operating and maintenance personnel and are often left with inexperienced people. This presents a dilemma; users can no longer afford their attempts at making pumps bulletproof (Swalley, 1999) and the exodus of experienced personnel only serves to exacerbate their predicament. As a result, a major chemical user issued a challenge to drastically reduce the total cost of pump ownership in their plants. They presented a specification for the desired performance of this “futuristic” pump, covering the following key items: • 50,000 hour Mean Time Between Failure • Ability to survive 10,000 start-stops • Able to run dry • Operating temperature range –100°F to 700°F • Capacities to 7500 gpm, heads to 1075 ft • Pump to be unaffected by 2 years non-operation • Easy to decontaminate • Operation on 50 or 60 Hz • Standardized connections and locations • Technical and service support as needed • First cost 25% less than equipment replaced (pump, seal, motor, baseplate, coupling and guard) • Rebuild cost less than 50% of new assembly The above items can be segregated into those that can be handled by proper pump selection, materials and construction and those that are more challenging to today’s state-of-the-art pump design. This paper will focus on the design challenges (shown in Italics) and presents a novel approach to reducing the total cost of pump ownership.