A Swedish municipality recently selected Xylem’s new Flygt Concertor to solve their wastewater challenges. Thanks to Flygt Concertor, the world’s first pumping system with integrated intelligence, Lomma municipality has clog-free pumping and has significantly reduced the pump system’s energy use.
Flygt Concertor is a smart, interconnected wastewater pumping system that senses the operating conditions of its environment, adapts its performance in real time and provides feedback to pumping station operators. The system features a built-in sump and pipe-cleaning features – a first for a wastewater pumping system.
These features, together with a second generation of Flygt’s patented Adaptive N-technology and an integrated pump-cleaning function, minimize vacuum cleaning costs.
Lomma municipality buys Flygt Concertor after a trial period
Lomma municipality is located in the Skåne region of southern Sweden. It serves over 23,000 inhabitants in three main districts, including several villages and neighboring communities. The municipality’s Civil Administration Unit is working intensively to expand and improve its services as its population has steadily grown over the last five years.
It is in this context that operators of the Borgeby treatment plant agreed to trial Flygt Concertor in one of their pump stations. The main challenges were to improve plant efficiency and reduce instances of pump clogging, which typically requires maintenance staff to intervene once a month.
Clog-free pumping and reduced energy consumption
In June 2015, Flygt Concertor was installed at Flädie Lundavägen pumping station, and the system’s performance was closely monitored over a period of six months. This showed that the newly installed system delivered a significant reduction in energy consumption. In addition to the energy savings, maintenance costs decreased by $1,300 annually.
“Since installing Flygt Concertor we have seen a significant drop in our energy bill,” says Anders Sjöstrand, Manager at Borgeby treatment plant. “Maintenance call-outs have also been reduced to zero, as the overall performance at the station has been greatly improved. We were so impressed with the system that we decided to replace our current system and install this new solution permanently at the station.”
Reducing the variety of pumps needed
Furthermore, the benefits of acquiring a system that is so flexible is that in addition to the immediate positive impact of the trouble-free pumping and energy savings, operators can, for example, plan a significant reduction in their pump stock, reducing the variety of pumps needed to cover all of their applications.
Lomma municipality is aware of the inventory savings made possible with Flygt Concertor.
“By having Concertor with three outlet dimensions, we can drastically reduce our inventory since we won’t need so many varieties of pumps and impellers,” says Sjöstrand. “We’re confident that this can deliver savings for us, and we are looking forward to seeing how it will work in the future.”
One of Concertor’s unique features is its flexibility. Not only does this new system adjust pump performance based on actual flow requirements, making selection easier and guaranteeing optimal performance under variable flow, but it is also scalable, which means that it is possible for operators to add new functionality without losing their initial investment. This makes it suitable for challenges in many different sectors, being able to improve the efficiency of stations with different characteristics.