Building water-resilient infrastructure to protect communities – and the bottom line

Sector: Industry and infrastructure

Challenge: Reducing life cycle costs

As populations grow and climatic conditions become less predictable, we are seeing more cases of urban infrastructure being ill-equipped to protect those they are built to serve, whether from flooding, erosion or other weather-related events. As a result, there is a drive to act now to prevent further malfunctions, provoking a call for investment to create infrastructure capable of withstanding future environmental incidents.

Creating water-resilient systems fit for the future calls for greater insights into the needs of cities and citizens. With the true cost of risk now assessed at a boardroom level, greater demand grows to fully comprehend how operations can be affected by erratic water resources challenging every stage of the life cycle.

Harnessing the power of decision intelligence to build resilience at every stage, from design to installation and operation, is crucial and means life cycle costs can be kept low. It also means the bottom line, and our communities, can be protected in the long term.

Investing in quality for water intake

Selecting quality that lasts from the design stage onwards can help to keep costs lower throughout the asset’s life cycle, with energy-efficient equipment bringing significant savings. Decision intelligence, including assets capable of sensing their environment and moderating performance accordingly, can ensure a rapid return on investment.

For top efficiency in industrial water supply, the right combination of motors, variable speed drives and pumps can provide reliable performance and maximum savings. The Lowara Smart Pump range incorporates state-of-the-art technology to optimise performance, including the GHV series booster sets for water supply, water pressure increase and water transfer in industries and other applications, which offer variable speed control for the greatest economy and system reliability.

Reduce call-outs for process water management

With space often at a premium in urban environments, features like flow guiding channels, baffle walls, or formed suction intakes for axial flow pumps can offer the most efficient solution. Sizing of pumps can also offer rewards over the length of the life cycle: larger customised pumps offer more efficiency while smaller pumps can be more adaptable, particularly useful when flow is variable.

Remote monitoring options, like next-generation SCADA systems, can offer more tailored ways to monitor, control and optimise assets – helping to keep maintenance costs low at that phase of the life cycle. Built-in alarm management and advanced measurement systems can provide a complete overview of all sites, with the right information available when it is needed to help optimise both water and wastewater systems and reduce call-outs and site visits.

Halving energy consumption

There is the potential to increase energy efficiency by up to 50% by using intelligent solutions that adjust assets’ performance according to their environment. This was the case at Heathrow Airport, where two Flygt Experior Adaptive N submersible sewage pumps were installed along with two SmartRun intelligent pump controllers in a localised trial to reduce energy bills. The self-cleaning Flygt N-technology ensures efficient pumping regardless of wastewater challenges, cutting tough solids without clogging and sacrificing pump efficiency. With continuous innovation the Experior solution mentioned above of Flygt adaptive N submersible sewage pump and sperate Smartrun intelligent VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) intelligent controller have been combined in to the Concertor pump offering a smaller footprint for installation along with a number of other benefits to the user.

By reducing the pumps’ speed on every cycle until the minimum specific energy is found, energy usage at just one pumping station will be reduced by 50% over a five-year period. As well as cutting running costs, the new more responsive system has lowered maintenance time from 21 hours a year to four hours.

Getting smarter about water management

The latest smart monitoring and control solutions can provide a real-time overview of any system, allowing for pre-emptive or responsive action to be taken if variations are detected. This helps to optimise performance and prevent incidents and, by ensuring assets including pumps, motors, heat exchangers and steam traps are performing within the correct range, can maximise their lifespan and save on maintenance or expensive downtime.

The optimyze modular condition monitoring solution, for example, provides health guidance and predictive maintenance advice for rotating and fixed assets: it intermittently monitors system vibration then uses predictive analysis to identify potential equipment problems before they occur. As information is monitored, collected, stored and analysed in the sensor, this allows operators to understand the current health and historical trends of assets to manage system reliability meaning preventative maintenance can be carried out before issues become critical to uptime.

Assets that work on an industrial scale

The right investment in solutions that offer decision intelligence can take away the guesswork for operators, helping to build resilient infrastructure in which life cycle and energy costs are kept as low as possible. In addition to futureproofing assets, collecting and analysing data can ensure reliability by helping to inform a preventative maintenance regime that avoids the hidden long-term costs of a reactive programme.

Investing in intelligent hardware at every stage from design stage to operation means assets – and the systems which they make up – work for the benefit of the industries they serve.