Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/957105
Pump maintenance: keeping it pumping In Focus W hen it comes to calculating the cost of a pump, maintenance costs are oen the hardest to pin down and predict. Unlike upfront capital expenditure, which is usually front of mind for procurement teams, or energy use, which dominates the thinking when it comes to operating expenditure, the cost of maintaining pumps is frequently underestimated and the subject of dubious assumptions. Not only are maintenance costs depend- ent upon system reliability, design and operating conditions, but they can also vary widely according to how effective the asset owner is at monitoring its own pumps and nipping any problems in the bud. Water utilities, which are obliged by their regulators to consider the impact of their decisions on total expenditure, can find that wastewater pumps in particular can rack up spiralling maintenance costs if they are poorly specified, face unexpectedly challeng- ing effluents or suffer from frequent blockages. In such cases, the way the maintenance regime is arranged, and the knowledge and ability of the operations team to respond to issues, can be as important as choosing the right pump in the first place. However, the good news is that there is much that operators can do to raise their game in this area, and even more that can be achieved if they are Maintaining pumps in top condition is a vital consideration in the totex equation for pumping assets, and water utilities can benefit in this area from the help on offer from the supply chain by James Brockett willing to engage expertise and services from pump manufacturers and the supply chain. So what are the keys to improve- ment? Condition-based maintenance With a host of technologies now available for monitoring the perfor- mance of a pump and for accessing and analysing the performance data remotely (including the Internet of Things and the Cloud), there is no reason why maintenance must take the form of formulaic, regular, scheduled visits. Instead, condition-based maintenance – where effort is focused on the assets most likely to need WWT PUMP AND VALVE SUPPLEMENT 2018 5