by smartphone or tablet via a Bluetooth
gateway. "During development, special
attention was paid to security. The KSB
FlowManager app establishes a
point-to-point connection, which
ensures that the correct pump is being
addressed, and only by the person
entitled to do so," says Daniel
Gontermann.
"The great thing is that
you can now defer the
individualisation of the
pump to a much later
point in the supply chain,
which of course means
that fewer variants are
required." This is another
aspect that is likely to
play a major role in
pump selection in the
future. With
individual fixed speed
adjustment, fewer
pump sizes now cover the entire
selection chart – with efficiency and
NPSH values remaining practically
constant. The variant complexity for
hydraulics is reduced by more than
50%, saving time and money on design
and administration. "Simply reducing the
complexity by having fewer variants will
promote the topic of virtual impeller
trimming," says Daniel Gontermann.
Conclusion
Original equipment manufacturers
(OEMs) will be the first to benefit from
the new opportunities presented by
digitalisation, by being able to drastically
reduce their stock, for example.
Nevertheless, this shows the direction in
which pump technology will move.
"Digitalisation is not an end in itself,"
emphasises Dr Paulus. "Our users will
only accept the new technologies if they
bring added value to their day-to-day
work and, above all, are workable."
This last point is certainly one of the
greatest challenges.
"In the same way that we have been
getting the most out of pumps in terms of
performance and efficiency for decades,
we are now also making progress in
developing the algorithms and so"ware,"
concludes. "Without our many years of
pump expertise, it would be simply
impossible to make a pump fit for the
Industry 4.0 era."
Fig 3: MyFlow Drive allows the pump
operator to increase or reduce the
volume flow rate with just a few
simple adjustments.
WWT PUMP SUPPLEMENT DECEMBER 2017 15
