Article
Pioneering safe, efficient technology for industry in a water-scarce world
Increasing urbanisation and industrialisation are putting global water resources under immense pressure – and growing demand for manufacturing, electricity and domestic use will increase water demand by 55% by 2050, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Furthermore, water demand for manufacturing, in particular, could increase by 400% from 2000 to 2050, the organisation predicts.
Water scarcity already plagues many parts of South Africa and the rest of the continent. Smart water-treatment processes – for example, converting to using recycled water in cooling tower applications – have therefore become essential to secure a drought-proof water supply, says Dean Naidoo, Grundfos segment manager: industry/mining.
“Approximately 50% of the world’s population live in areas that are potentially water-scarce at least one month a year. Yet, every day, more than 30-million gallons of water is used by evaporative cooling towers in a city like Singapore alone.”
Grundfos prides itself on supplying industry customers with solutions to help them reuse water effectively and cost-efficiently, ensuring water quality and reducing costs.
Here are four innovative Grundfos product ranges to add to your industrial water-treatment toolkit:
1. Flexible, smaller-footprint NB and NK pump ranges reduce water loss and costs
Grundfos’s high-tech, highly reliable NB and NK smart pump ranges are particularly well suited to industrial use, providing customers with EN733 water specification options or ISO2858 chemical specification options and the newest technology.
These flexible products offer the possibility of custom-built solutions, with various configuration options in terms of different materials, impeller trims, shaft seals, bearing brackets and motors, explains Naidoo.
Both the versions with standard motors and E-motors are extremely efficient, and a customised NBG or NKG pump with a single mechanical shaft seal can handle liquid temperatures up to +220°C, he notes, adding that the pressure ratings of the pumps are up to 16bar for cast iron pumps and 25bar for stainless steel pumps.
“An extremely important feature of the NB pump is its close-coupled design, providing benefits such as a smaller footprint, easy maintenance, and elimination of bearing bracket and common base plate, further simplifying maintenance and reducing cost.”
This, he says, can make a real difference to the evaporative cooling tower industry – the smaller footprint results in a lightweight solution and a manufacturer can even mount the pumps vertically on smaller cooling towers to save more space.
NK, NKE and NK bare shaft pumps
If water pressure is too high for too long, there’s a risk of increased water loss, lower revenue and increased maintenance of pipes. The solution is Grundfos’s complete system designed for flow and pressure management and meeting medium-flow requirements from local pumping stations.
NK standard pumps, NKE standard pumps with MGE motor, and NK bare-shaft end-suction long-coupled single-stage pumps are perfect for this purpose in water-distribution systems.
These pumps, which comply with standard EN 733, are suitable for:
Find out more about the NK pumps range here: https://product-selection.grundfos.com/za/products/nk-nke-nke-series-2000-nk-bare-shaft?tab=products
NB, NBE, NBE Series 2000
Grundfos supplies these pumps as a complete system designed for flow and pressure management, meeting medium-flow requirements from local pumping stations.
The NB standard pumps, and NBE pumps with MGE motors, also eliminate the problem of water pressure at too high a level, for too long.
The pumps, which comply with standard EN 733, are suitable for:
Commercial air conditioning
Biofuel
Drinking water treatment
Wastewater treatment
Find out more about the NB range here: https://product-selection.grundfos.com/za/products/nb-nbe-nbe-series-2000?tab=products
2. Intelligent Oxiperm and Vaccuperm systems reduce contamination risk and water costs
Reliable water disinfection is crucial for health and safety. With water-borne diseases a worldwide concern, engineers are focusing on reducing the risk of biological contamination in water-treatment systems.
Grundfos supports industry with intelligent chlorine gas and chlorine dioxide water-disinfection solutions to mitigate bacteria growth, keep water quality under control and ultimately reduce clean water costs, explains Naidoo.
“Essentially, customers in the general manufacturing industry benefit from the safety, dosing accuracy, reliability, user-friendliness, easy integration, and control and communication features of the Vaccuperm [using chlorine gas] and Oxiperm [using chlorine dioxide] systems,” he says.
The “plug-and-play” design of the Oxiperm makes a real difference, in particular, to the beverage manufacturing industry, and specifically dairies and breweries.
“It allows for easy and quick integration into an existing process without interrupting the existing water supply or process.”
It also offers disinfection technology for all industrial water systems but – importantly – helps customers destroy biofilm, germs and pathogens such as legionella in industrial water system, ensuring they comply to regulation requirements and meet their own internal and strict health, safety and quality protocols to produce products suitable for human consumption.
Oxiperm systems
Water disinfection with chlorine dioxide is an efficient way of fighting legionella bacteria and other microorganisms in water, such as viruses, parasites and fungus spores. Grundfos’s digital, integrated Oxiperm DDA pump is an effective chlorine-dioxide preparation and dosing system.
Chlorine dioxide kills microorganisms in water through irreversible oxidative destruction of the transport proteins in the living cells. It has a long dwell time in the tubing system, so it disinfects even without re-dosing.
One advantage of chlorine dioxide is its effectiveness against biofilm, removing the breeding ground for microorganisms and preventing them from building up again.
The system can be used in a variety of applications, such as:
Municipal waterworks for drinking water
The food and beverage industry
Cooling water
Wastewater treatment
Vaccuperm systems
Most drinking water installations in commercial buildings are disinfected to prevent microbiological contamination, such as legionella and E coli. One reliable disinfection method is by using chlorine gas, and the Grundfos Vaccuperm pump is a highly efficient chlorine gas dosing system.
Grundfos also supplies Vaccuperm accessories, a range of vacuum change-over devices, installed between two gas container batteries to ensure an uninterrupted gas supply by automatically changing over from an empty battery to a full standby battery.
Find out more about the Oxiperm and Vaccuperm systems here: https://product-selection.grundfos.com/za/products/disinfection-systems?tab=products
3. BMS pumps help save energy while facilitating osmosis and filtration processes
The reality of climate change and the need for eco-friendly practices make energy-saving a crucial part of modern industrial and water-saving processes.
Water scarcity has spurred the growth of desalination plants, globally, and on the African continent, where such plants are predominantly used by manufacturers and mines to secure water supply for production and profitability.
“Desalination facilities require equipment constructed of high-grade stainless steel to handle seawater, and feed pumps for their membrane system must be capable of generating high pressure – often up to 80bar,” explains Naidoo. “The BMS high-pressure pump range was designed with exactly this in mind.
“Critical pump components in contact with aggressive seawater and brackish water are made of super duplex stainless steel providing compatibility and resistance. The motors in the range have the speed capability of 4 000rpm to 5 500rpm, ensuring the pump range can deliver up to 82.7bar.”
The benefits to the end-user are myriad. The well-considered design employs permanent magnet motor technology, giving the added benefit of a lightweight pump with a smaller footprint. A 180kW permanent magnet motor, for example, is about one-third the size of its equivalent standard 180kW asynchronous motor and about a quarter the weight, providing the flexibility for installation in small spaces and where lightweight equipment is needed.
The BMS horizontal multistage pump range includes a selection of booster modules, primarily used for reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration applications.
Not only are all their critical components made of the toughest material, enhancing their durability and reducing maintenance requirements to the minimum, but they also ensure improved energy savings, thanks to their high efficiency.
These systems are suitable for:
Commercial water pressure boosting
Filtration
Industrial water treatment
Drinking water treatment
Find out more about BMS solutions here: https://product-selection.grundfos.com/za/products/bms?tab=products
BMS: a case in point
During the globally headline-making 2018 Cape Town drought and water crisis, many businesses and industries had to switch to alternative water sources to remain operational.
One concrete example demonstrating the benefits of Grundfos’s BMS range was the West Coast-based fishing company Sea Harvest, which came close to shutting down, if only temporarily, during the drought. At the time, it was mainly using municipal water and had to find a sustainable solution to take it off the grid.
The choice fell on a desalination plant provided by ImproChem, based on dissolved air floatation, ultra-filtration and seawater reverse osmosis systems and with a Grundfos BMSX pump as the main pump.
“The fishery used the BMS technology to its fullest potential by combining the high-pressure pump with a pressure exchanger and variable speed-booster pump to reduce energy consumption and actually downsize the high-pressure feed pump, saving on operating expenses by up to 30%,” stresses Grundfos’s Dean Naidoo.
The plant now funds itself as it delivers potable water to the factory, reducing the reliance on municipal water.
Read more here: https://www.grundfos.com/za/learn/cases/food-production-takes-water--as-does-sea-harvest-when-cultivatin
4. DID digital systems provide superior control in commercial water disinfection
Monitoring water quality and precisely controlling disinfectant addition or pH adjustment are essential for many water-treatment processes.
The Grundfos DID measurement and control system with bypass flow cell is intended for monitoring and control of disinfectants, acidity, oxidation-reduction potential, conductivity and temperature.
The system is designed to match perfectly with Grundfos dosing pumps and gas-dosing systems, as well as systems for the generation and dosing of chlorine dioxide and hypochlorite.
It is preassembled on a common backplate and includes a control unit CU382, and a water-parameter sensor with cables to the control unit and hydraulic assembly.
Find out more about the DID system here: https://product-selection.grundfos.com/za/products/measurement-control/did?tab=models
DID: a case in point
A European metal-mechanic company discovered that something was wrong with one of the cooling towers – the hoses for the addition of biocide were either empty or full of air, causing faulty dosing. As a consequence, the bacteria count was double the recommendation of the chemical supplier, posing a risk of biological contamination and legionella.
The facility was also experiencing an unacceptably high amount of water usage and struggled with time-consuming legal compliance reporting.
The company realised that it needed to make a change, and decided to invest in Grundfos’s new intelligent solution, which combines several components, including intelligent digital dosing pumps, the DID measurement and control device, and a cloud-based remote monitoring system connecting them.
The DID system can react when the cooling water reaches a critical dissolved solids content, maintaining the water quality within optimal parameters and keeping water balance at optimal levels without the need for manual operation.
Once the system is implemented, the facility expects to achieve smoother operations, better bacteria control, easier compliance reporting and water savings.
Read more here: https://www.grundfos.com/za/learn/cases/safe-effective-water-conditioning-in-cooling-towers
In summary, Grundfos offers many ground-breaking products that help customers reduce their environmental footprint while saving water and energy.
These solutions also help them obtain the right water quality while reducing chemical consumption, and to comply with regulations through real-time system monitoring and automated reporting, while lowering the risk of system downtime.