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Screening Pumping Systems for Energy Savings Opportunities
Abstract
In most industrial settings, energy consumed by pumping systems is responsible for a major part of the overall electricity bill. In some cases, the energy is used quite efficiently; in others, it is not. Facility operators may be very familiar with pumping system equipment controllability, reliability, and availability, but only marginally aware of system efficiency. But there are some good reasons to increase that awareness:
1)
As
budgets
shrink
and
the
intensity
of
both
domestic and international competition increases,
the pressure to find additional ways of reducing
costs will grow.
2)
The reliability of pumps correlates with pump
efficiency;
that
is,
pumps
operated
near
the
design,
or
best
efficiency point,
will
tend
to
perform
more
reliably
and
with
greater
availability.
3)
The questions of whether global warming is truly
occurring,
and
if it
is,
whether
humankind's
activities
play
a
significant role
may
both
be
debatable.
But there is no debating the fact that
there are
finite energy resources, particularly of
the fossil fuel variety, on the earth.
If we are to
be counted as good stewards, then careful, if not
frugal resource use is important.
The cost of energy consumed by pumps usually
dominates the pump life cycle cost. But many end users, already stretched to support day-to-day facility operations, lack the time and resources to perform a methodical engineering study of, in some cases, hundreds of pumps within their facilities to understand the energy costs and the potential opportunity for reduction.
Under the auspices of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Motor Challenge Program, prescreening guidance documents and a computer program called PSAT (Pumping System Assessment Tool) have been developed to help end users, consultants, and equipment distributors recognize, both qualitatively and quantitatively, pumping system efficiency improvement opportunities.
This paper describes the general methodologies employed and shows case study examples of the prescreening and software application.
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Citation
Casada, D. (1999). Screening Pumping Systems for Energy Savings Opportunities. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /91127.