Case

Empowering a continent through innovative water solutions

Whether it is providing centrifugal pumps to bring clean drinking water to African communities, supplying intelligent pump systems with cloud connectivity or offering state-of-the-art remote-management solutions, Grundfos is dedicated to pioneering water and climate-change solutions and improving lives.

As a global organisation, Grundfos supplies a full range of groundbreaking systems, products and services to African markets. On a continent where water and climate issues have a direct impact on livelihoods, access to pumps for irrigation, industry, groundwater and many other uses is key – as are the services to ensure the pumps’ efficiency and reliability.

“Water treatment is technology-driven and heavily regulated, and you need a partner that offers pump, dosing and disinfection solutions for the entire water treatment process,” says Grundfos sub-Saharan Africa lead business development manager Niren Rohanlal. Grundfos can provide packaged solutions or individual products for each stage of the water treatment cycle, he adds.

Here’s a round-up of four top solutions that are making a real difference to the quality of life of thousands of people across Africa:

CR multistage centrifugal pumps ensure high performance

Pumps come in a variety of designs. Choosing the right one depends on the job you need it to perform.

In-line multistage pumps are used in installations where a high head is needed, such as water supply, water treatment and most industrial solutions – including those for aggressive liquids.

Whether your goal is commercial or industrial fire protection, bottle washing, filling, leach mining, industrial water supply, water reuse or surface water intake, Grundfos has a vertical, multistage centrifugal pump perfect for the job.

With their optimised design for temperature control, the CR range of energy-efficient pumps ensures efficiency and helps keep operating costs down. What’s more, the new-generation CR pumps – with a broad selection of flow sizes and working pressures – have millions of customisable solutions.

“Thanks to a small footprint, the pumps are easier and less costly to install than comparable pumps,” notes Rohanlal. “The new CR pumps have been developed using simulation-driven design to perfect every single component and have been field-tested around the world, so you can install and operate the range with total confidence.

“We offer a mix-and-match modular approach, so you can configure a pump that meets your exact needs,” he adds.

These four products all have balanced shaft seals and wear-resistant bearing material:

The CR, with the pump head and base in cast iron and all other wetted parts in stainless steel
The CRN, with the pump materials in contact with the liquid in high-grade stainless steel
The CRE, with the pump head and base in cast iron and all other wetted parts in stainless steel
The CRT, with materials in contact with the liquid in titanium, which has exceptional resistance to a wide range of acids, alkalis, seawater and industrial chemicals

Find out more about the Grundfos CR pump family here:

Case study:
CR multistage pumps bring water to remote communities
In 2019, Grundfos assisted in a project to bring potable water to 15 communities near Bafikrom, Ghana.

The pump system was implemented using Grundfos CR 32-4-2 vertical centrifugal pumps, designed around high efficiency, user-friendliness and ease of maintenance, ensuring less consumption of energy to operate and reducing general maintenance time.

The project now provides water to 15 communities, some of which had not had access to potable water for well over a decade. More than 7 000 people now have access to clean drinking water and for some older community members, it was their first time seeing water flow from a pipe or tap. Read more here.

Digital dosing pumps bring high precision

Wastewater processes inevitably involve chemical treatment – an application for which dosing pumps are indispensable.

The advantage of digital dosing pumps is that they ensure high-precision dosing of chemicals, enabling advanced control of process and integration with system control. Grundfos offers a wide range of dosing pumps covering not only wastewater treatment processes but many others, too.

The Grundfos smart digital dosing pumps are installed across various sites around the region and the world, says Rohanlal. “Simple to operate, easy to set up and with a straightforward navigation menu, smart digital also offers flow intelligence, which gives operational safety and precision.

“All this contributes to keeping life-cycle costs low, and the intelligent dosing pumps can be applied to industrial water treatment processes that require chemical dosing, such as clean-in-place systems, pH adjustment, reverse osmosis, filtration, coagulation and flocculation.”

The Grundfos digital dosing pumps, tailored for specific needs and budgets, include these highly reliable products:

Digital Dosing Advanced (DDA). This smart digital diaphragm dosing pump with an internal brushless motor drive is a high-end solution for complex and demanding applications requiring maximum process reliability.

The pump has an intuitive graphical user interface, providing easy access to a wide range of advanced functions and features. It ensures smooth, continuous and ultra-precise dosing in applications that require chemical treatment and/or conditioning of media.

The DDA-FC and DDA-FCM versions feature a FlowControl system that detects overpressure, line bursts and air bubbles in the dosing head and suction-side cavitation.

The built-in dosing timer means you can set up batch dosing – either as a repeating cycle or for up to 16 procedures over a week.

Digital Dosing Convenience (DDC). This user-friendly pump with a powerful internal variable-speed stepper motor drive offers a balance between price and performance in common dosing applications.

Advanced features include a SlowMode anti-cavitation function for high-viscosity liquids, a calibration mode and a built-in service display, complemented by a simple graphical user interface supporting more than 28 languages.

The DDC pump can be fully integrated in control systems for high-dosing precision.

Digital Dosing Essential (DDE). This cost-effective entry-level dosing pump has an internal stepper motor drive and all the benefits of digital dosing.

It has a maximum turn-down ratio of up to 1:1 000 and offers smooth, continuous dosing. The operating modes are straightforward, and it has an external stop function and empty-level signal.

The pump is ideal for basic dosing applications, including for original equipment manufacturers.

Find out more about Grundfos digital dosing pumps here.

Case study:
DDA dosing pumps win the day – and bring more business!
Grundfos’s innovative solutions speak for themselves – and a recent success in Ikeja, Nigeria, truly drives this home. One of our top industrial customers, Greenpeg Engineering, approached a large food and beverage client based in Ilesha to replace competitor chemical dosing pumps with those of the Grundfos DDA series.

To prove its point, Greenpeg supplied the end customer with a DDA 200-4 AR-PVC/V/C dosing pump at its own cost and installed it, with the agreement that the company would place an order to replace the balance of its dosing pumps if it was satisfied with the Grundfos DDA pump’s performance.

Within 12 days, having seen the significant benefits of the DDA pump, the customer ordered six additional Grundfos pumps. Greenpeg, supported by Grundfos, modified its pump skid to hold the six new DDA 200-4 pumps, amended the PVC lines, and upgraded an integrated control system for communication between the dosing controls and pumps.

The result? A very happy client.

iSOLUTIONS add smart solutions to your system

Grundfos is all about water and water solutions, and our Grundfos iSOLUTIONS cloud-based system has myriad uses – not least to optimise operations in wastewater networks and help you save energy, labour and maintenance costs.

Grundfos iSOLUTIONS combines customer demands, application expertise and intelligent pump design for the optimal performance and equipment choice.

The three key elements making up iSOLUTIONS are: pump, cloud and services. In a nutshell, iSOLUTIONS is all about intelligent pump systems and water technology using smart pumps, cloud connectivity and digital services to enable real-time monitoring, remote control, fault prediction and system optimisation, and optimum performance.

“Pumps do not operate in isolation, and the key to maximum efficiency is optimising the whole system and not just the pumps,” explains Rohanlal. “The easy integration of pumps, drives, measurement, controls, protection and communication into the process, combined with a high level of customisation, compactness and preset units, all save time spent on engineering, installation and commissioning.”

These systems can improve workflow and maximise performance in a wide range of applications, including:

Delivering intelligent pumps, cloud connectivity and digital services for industrial water treatment, cooling and boilers
Helping water utilities ensure reliability and optimise performance by the increased use of live data
Driving intelligent systems in commercial buildings, ensuring optimal performance, comfort, control and energy efficiency

What’s more, the plug-and-play solutions connect to almost any monitoring system, delivering actionable data insights for applications such as these three examples:

1. System intelligence in commercial buildings

To optimise system performance in building applications such as commercial air-conditioning, fire protection, heating, water-pressure boosting, water disinfection and wastewater installations, it’s important to look beyond individual components to intelligent, system-wide solutions.

The Grundfos iSOLUTIONS system ensures that intelligent pumps, cloud connectivity and digital services work together to ensure top performance with high-energy efficiency, reduced complexity and low life-cycle costs.

2. Maintaining utilities supporting industrial processes

Grundfos has tailored pump solutions to support a wide range of applications, including water treatment, cooling and heating, and wastewater handling.

Our reliable, premium industrial pumps exceed efficiency requirements and save on energy, with intelligent monitoring and control systems making sure life-cycle costs are kept to a minimum.

Other applications include temperature control, industrial boiler systems, fire protection, heating, water supply, and water reuse.

3. Optimising and treating water supply

Sourcing raw water is the first step in any water supply system. Grundfos’s cost-effective, reliable and energy-optimised raw-water pumping solutions are financially and environmentally sustainable.

Drinking-water treatment is technology-driven and heavily regulated. As a supplier of state-of-the-art pumping, dosing and disinfection products, Grundfos can deliver tailored, packaged solutions for the entire water treatment process – from smaller custom solutions to complex systems.

With our eye firmly on reducing water loss, energy consumption and operational costs for leaks and pipe maintenance, our solutions maintain correct water pressure and deliver peace of mind. Other applications include drinking irrigation, ground- and surface-water intake, solar water solutions and water distribution.

Find out more about iSOLUTIONS here.

Remote management system brings real-time monitoring online

It can be tricky to manage pump systems in remote locations. Grundfos has the answer: an internet-based remote management system (GRM), providing an easy, efficient, secure, cost-effective way to monitor and manage systems reliably from anywhere in the world.

All you need is a web browser and internet connection, and you can even access live pump data on your mobile device.

The GRM solution includes automatic alarms to notify you via your mobile device if there are any issues with pumps, and for a fixed yearly fee, you get enterprise-class hosting, security and system IT support.

“Pumps, sensors, meters and Grundfos pump controllers are connected to a CIU 271 GPRS data logger,” explains Rohanlal. “Changes in pump performance and energy consumption can be tracked and documented using automatically generated reports and trend graphs. This can give an indication of wear or damage, and service and maintenance can be planned accordingly.”

Signing up is simple. Once you contact Grundfos, your facility will be pre-qualified based on the information you provide. We will then do a comprehensive system inspection on-site, followed by a proposal and GRM quotation report. Once you accept, Grundfos will commission your GRM system on-site, train your personnel and set up your account.

Gain access to live data, online performance monitoring and optimised processes. Plus, when the system is up and running, Grundfos will follow up to ensure everything is working and your pumps are performing optimally.

The service options are:

The GRM basic installation, including hardware and commissioning (if you use Grundfos E-pumps, this is all you need)
The GRM Extended I&O option for installations without E-pumps
A one-year GRM licence
GRM consultancy services for solving installation problems

Find out more about the Grundfos remote management here.

Case study:
GRM enables essential services during Covid-19 lockdown
The Covid-19 lockdown posed challenges for hygiene and sanitation service provider Ecowize – which delivers an essential service to numerous food and beverage facilities across South Africa – to visually inspect its pump systems supplying water for cleaning and sanitation processes.

Low-pressure pump systems are the main supply source of water used during the cleaning and sanitation process in food production facilities, and any downtime of the booster set could result in production losses and potential food safety risks.

The company installed the Grundfos Remote Management system across various food production facilities countrywide, enabling continuous operations while remotely monitoring pump system performance, getting an overview of all alarms and warnings, and accessing accurate real-time data – all while practising safe social distancing.