Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/946410
March 2018 Water. desalination + reuse Tech Quarterly 21 • Geiger MultiDisc ® travelling water screens minimize space and OPEX • Easy to install and highly ef ficient: customized front-end screening to protect pumps and other downstream processes • State-of-the-art 316b-compliant fish protection technologies preserve natural resources • Our reliable cathodic corrosion protection systems protect your investment in sea and brackish water applications Geiger ® Water Intake Screening Solutions Made in Germany – Valued Worldwide Aqseptence Group GmbH Water Intake Systems Hardeckstrasse 3 76185 Karlsruhe, Ger many Phone +49 721 5001-0 info.geiger@aqseptence.com www.aqseptence.com gains are made when pumps form part of an entire system engineered for maximum energy savings. "The cost e ectiveness depends on the dimensions of the entire value chain of the plant; how big, what sizes of pumps you have — the bigger the pumps as part of the value chain, the bigger the plant, the bigger the potential energy savings," says Seebacher. Tailored systems In desalination, because each plant is unique, the speci• c pumping system can be tailored to be as energy e• cient as pos- sible while matching the client's speci• c requirements. "We have control volume pumps, high pressure pumps, axial split case pumps; depending on the set up of the desalination plant, includ- ing the distance from sea level of the plant, there is a whole range. We have product. But the major- ity of clients approach us for our engineering competence," says Seebacher. "You can talk about desalination but the require- ments are so di erent. We can, times. This reduced repairs and maintenance costs, and in the end also they optimised energy consumption," says Seebacher. Andritz used the digital twin of the plant to train BHP Billiton's operators, and to create the plans for construction. When the plant was built, the digital twin was migrated onto the live operating system as part of the commissioning process. The project demonstrated what's possible when a client is willing to get close to a supplier, to share data, and to open up operating systems to external partners. Even in cases where the client-supplier dialogue is more conventional, the greater the Š ow of communication, the better the potential outcomes. "In desalination, we have the pumps that feed the RO membranes, and normally, not always, but certainly in the old times we were quite used to receive only Š ow-head conditions from the client, for example for a high pressure pump that feeds the membranes. based on our product, change the angles of the impeller, to always • nd the best point in the Š ow chart for the machines. You cannot have a pump always running on the highest level of capacity, so we • nd the ideal spot, leveraging the best output and the capacity usage of the pump." An optimal design for the pumping system can result in signi• cant cost savings on the plant's energy bill. In one project, Andritz worked with mining conglomerate BHP Billiton on its construction of a new mine in Chile. "We took BHP Billiton's existing plants' data, put them on our IDEAS simulator, which we use to simulate workŠ ows and processes, and optimised the to-be-built plant for BHP Billiton. In that simulation we can exchange components, parts, equipment, and show them what would be the best idea, the best workŠ ow, and all the di erent components, not to overstretch the capacity, and to increase the maintenance cycle And at that moment, we want to convince the customer to split the heads to the most convenient pump selection. If you have a customer that allows us to get into that position, that would really help to have the highest pump e• ciency," Rubio adds. Don't design for the max The operating parameters for the pumps in a desalination plant can vary hugely, and one potentially big mistake in terms of energy e• ciency is to design the system around the maximum operating conditions. "Desalina- tion is quite complex in that the performance conditions — total dissolved solids (TDS), tem- perature, pH, and so on — are permanently changing. There are so many parameters that are always changing during the year. Therefore our customers must change performance conditions for the water treatment, and in many, many cases what we see, unfortunately, is that the plant is designed to feed the maximum operating conditions," says Rubio. "The problem is that in