Impact Of Digitization In Water Sector

Shankar Rajaram, Area Sales Director - Industry, INDO Region, Grundfos

Shankar Rajaram, Area Sales Director - Industry, INDO Region, Grundfos

Digitalization will have a significant impact on the water sector as it can improve the way water resources are being used and help in managing them more efficiently. For example, some of the benefits are:

• Energy efficiency: Ensuring sustainability and reducing energy consumption is essential to achieve a green footprint. For example, in the food and beverage industry many processes consume high amounts of energy. Contributing to this is the use of fixed-speed pumps that run at maximum capacity all the time, in auxiliary food-processing applications such as boilers and cooling towers. To address this, Grundfos has developed an energy-saving ‘E – version’ of its popular, widely used fixed-speed CR pump. The CRE pump is an ‘intelligent solution’, or ‘iSOLUTION’, incorporating an electronic motor with a built-in variable speed drive, giving it the ability to ramp up and down as it detects demand thereby enabling significant amount of energy savings.

• Reduced chemical use and better reuse of industrial wastewater: Process optimization and raw water monitoring can significantly reduce the amount of chemicals needed through accurate and frequent sampling. Dosing pumps used for chemical treatment processes such as disinfection, coagulation, flocculation, substrate dosing and alkalinity correction are some industrial applications in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and the food and beverage, etc. One such technology is the Grundfos’ SMART Digital Dosing system, an intelligent chemical dosing solution that ensures superiority in precision and accuracy as compared to traditional dosing pumps.[i] Automated chemical dosing pumps and disinfecting solutions ensure that manufacturing by product and effluents are treated properly and can be reused. Accurate dosing of chemicals is crucial for a successful wastewater treatment process. With Grundfos’ SMART Digital solutions, chemical dosing of wastewater treatment is made more accurate, reliable and cost-effective in the long run.

• Reduced downtime: Digitalization allows predictive maintenance by helping a utility decide when repairs are necessary. This can save time and labor by avoiding unnecessary maintenance and outages that lead to long downtimes. For example, in the Textile Industry, India Dyeing Private ltd. based out of Tirupur, to optimize the performance of their pumpa variable speed system was installed to fill the tanks faster which resulted in trouble free operation.

• Service: Today adoption of digital services ensures data-driven decision making in the pumping industry.

For example, Grundfos’ mobile application called SmArt Serv enables customers to raise a service request online, therefore reducing downtime significantly[iii]and limiting human interface, through remote monitoring of intelligent pumps. Solutions like these are crucial in times of the COVID pandemic where the system can operate and run on its own with no human intervention.

2.How Can Cloud Connectivity And Digital Services Benefit All The Users Involved?
Digital and cloud connected services reduce the cost of managing and maintaining your pumping systems. Intelligent and cloud connected pumps have been on the rise owing to the scalability and flexibility they offer to pump manufacturers in terms of servicing. Purpose built cloud applications gather real time data from IoT sensors which has helped in proactive maintenance of water network infrastructure.

Grundfos has entered into a strategic collaboration with Siemens to harness the power of digitalization for solving the world’s water and climate challenges. Siemens and Grundfos are combining the competences of both companies to support customers in their digital transformation and in the implementation of intelligent solutions. Solutions from Siemens Digital Enterprise portfolio can be used, for example, to increase the uptime of pumps and motors, and to optimize their operation. Siemens MindSphere open cloud-based IoT operating system combined with Grundfos IoT solutions can optimize pump and motor schedules to maximize uptime and minimize energy consumption.

Similarly, with our focus on prevention of water leaks we invested in smart water infrastructure to predict pump failures and leakage detection. In collaboration with Microsoft, we established a

time-saving, cost-effective remote monitoring and maintenance solution which allowed two-way communications between Grundfos’ pumps and customer’s monitoring consoles. Using Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge, Grundfos was able to collect pump data from intelligent sensors in real time and synthesise it using Microsoft Dynamics 365, enabling the smart pumps to help predict, prevent, and react to water issues.

3.What Are E-Pumps? How Can They Be Used By Their Various Users?
Electronic pumps, shortly known as E-pumps, refer to in-line water delivery systems that have augmented communication capabilities and integrate smart features such as sensors, multi pump functions and advanced control modes. These pumps are specifically designed so that they are easy to install, monitor and deliver maximum efficiency. For example, a hallmark of a well-designed E-pump is the proper utilization of intelligent system controls and prefabrication, making it more adaptive and compact.
Efforts are ongoing to ensure that the burden of configuring the system on-site doesn’t fall on the end user alone. It is instead a plug-and-play system used to draw out piping, which is ready to run once installation is finished. With E-pumps, our customers can move a step closer to achieving their energy consumption goals.

The E-pumps provide constant or variable flow, pressure and temperature for applications like heating and air-conditioning systems, water supply systems, pressure boosting systems and processing systems with fluctuating loads. E-pumps deliver tremendous pumping flexibility and energy savings. Each pump automatically adjusts its speed to meet a wide range of operating conditions.

For instance, Rakshit Pharma, a leading pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturer from Vishakhapatnam, utilized cloud computing solutions to optimize its processes, in which E-pumps played a key part[iv]. They were pivotal in reducing overall system complexity, thereby increasing the reliability and energy efficiency of the pumping systems. Grundfos’ CRE pump solved the challenge of demineralized water circulation system by smoothly handling variable load profiles, thereby increasing the overall efficiency.

4.How Can Digitisation And E-Solutions Be Used To Cut Down The Carbon Emission In The Environment?
Industrial water usage is intrinsically linked with CO2 generation. This is crucial as CO2 emissions contribute to a significant increase in temperature, causing the process to become counterproductive in the first place. Digitization and e-solutions basically have the key to solving this problem: analyzing and real-time monitoring of the system leads to easier identification of failures that would lead to energy efficiency across varied industries. The development of industry-based applications that utilize IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning are an effective way to pursue this goal. Also, fault prediction increases efficiency – and efficiency is key when it comes to building greener water management.

Recently, Grundfos performed energy audits on a paint manufacturing facility’s cooling tower pumps and discovered that the system could be optimized. Grundfos switched the old pumps with Grundfos CRE pumps with IE5 motors. These permanent magnet motors helped in reducing the energy consumption by 42% and CO2 emissions by 72% .

Also, innovative solutions like the Grundfos iSOLUTIONS are also designed to study the performance of a pump and adapt to it through digitization, which minimizes the energy consumption, making pumps smarter and greener. Furthermore, the ability to customize solutions for every pump, pump systems are bound to experience less downtime and fewer failures, thereby emphasizing on the benefits of digitalized pump solutions.
5.What Is The Role Of Pumps In Industrial Water Reuse?
Pumps are the heart of any industrial process. Any industrial application is directly or indirectly dependent on pumps, as water plays a significant role in industrial processes. Be it industrial cooling, boiler feeds, wastewater treatment or specific processes. Industries require water from sources that are either limited or are utilized by the locality for civilian purposes.

Energy efficient pumps are an effective tool to mitigate excessive consumption by industries. Digitally connected pumps are integral to every stage of a wastewater management process and are specifically designed to analyze industrial water processes and collect real-time data while incurring low maintenance costs and possessing greater durability.

Recently, a distillation plant with a production capacity of 12 million litres per day was set up in Gujarat to treat wastewater for reuse and reduce the burden on groundwater[v]. Along with all of the facility’s pump equipment, Grundfos delivered a Smart Filtration Suite, which is a collection of controls targeting membrane filtration, including desalination control. The Smart RO is equipped with unified data normalization analytic control, an antiscalant controller and an optimizer that supports automation. This enabled our customer to move towards energy and chemical conservation.

Additionally, Grundfos’ pumps provided the plant with a scope to increase the production capacity in the future. The antiscalant consumption of the plant was reduced by 75%[vi]. With Grundfos Smart Digital DDA, the plant’s clean-in-place (CIP) frequency would also drastically come down, which can help reduce downtime for maintenance. This advanced digital dosing pump also monitors chemical levels in a tank and communicates the same to avoid failures.

Sensor based technology and data analytics in a pump enables predictive maintenance of industrial processes. Utilising sensor data to understand if a particular equipment or part is underperforming or nearing its end stage is a great boon in determining repair needs of a system. This also makes remote monitoring of water possible thereby preventing leakages of water or wastewater during the transportation or distribution phase.

Smart pumping systems that, employ cutting edge resources like cloud, IoT can effectively monitor the digital water management infrastructure. Such pumping infrastructure will go a long way in reducing contamination of water and increase its reuse capability. Another method to actively convert such wastewater into reusable water are pumps that are specifically designed to dose the generated effluent with chemicals.