Energy Efficient Engineering of Process Plant Pumping Systems

Process plant pumps perform many important functions to maintain and control of process fluids. The physics and basic mechanics of pumps have not changed substantially in the last century. However, the state of the art in the application of pumps has improved dramatically in recent years. Even so, pumps are still often not well applied, and become common targets in revamp projects. Typically, revamp projects find that pump flow rates and delivery head are much more than the original design intent and that reducing flow rates to match load requirements or eliminating unnecessary pressure drops can bring about huge energy savings.

In process plant pump systems, energy efficiency is an opportunity as energy recovery is not generally possible and thus process plants are better off saving energy in the first place than attempting to recover it at a later stage.

Although fully optimizing any design will require some effort after installation, the prevalence and magnitude of the savings that are commonly found in revamp projects raise the larger question: How much greater would the savings be if pumps were selected and applied optimally during the design phase? Process duty conditions decisions made during the design phase have enormous implications on Energy costs throughout the operating life of the process plant. In this background the proposed workshop titled "Energy Efficient Engineering of Process Plant Pumping Systems" attempts to provide the much needed clarity on the Process design aspects and Mechanical design aspects of Pumping Systems towards achieving the energy efficiency immediately after commissioning the Process Plant.

Objectives

This workshop programme is designed to enable the practicing Engineers to enhance their knowledge and understanding of the factors that have to be considered into the design of Energy Efficient Engineering of Process Plant Pumping Systems. The key objectives of the workshop are:

• Understand the technical principles of fluid flow in pumping System
• Evaluate the pumping applications to choose the proper type of pump
• Adopt Systems approach that integrates process and equipment data together with pipe elements, drivers and control elements for an optimum pumping System design that yields the highest efficiency, reliability and maintainability
• Understand the impact of maintenance on pumping System efficiency