Innovation, greater safety emphasis and the growth of ‘end use’ companies have ensured that the next decade is going to be a good time for chemical chemicals cover feature pumps manufacturers.
Chemical pumps have long been successful at so-called vertical market integration: refining products in order that they can be applied along more and more of the sector supply chain.
Their ability to deal with the challenges of corrosive, abrasive and viscous elements has increased reliance upon these products for liquid gas, petroleum, solvents and suchlike.
But these pumps’ vertical success is increasingly mirrored by a horizontal growth across many different industries that recognise their durability can be adapted to good effect.
Intelligence analysts Fact.MR predict a significant expansion in chemical pumping opportunities, attributing this to products resistance to corrosion and abrasion in particular.
It notes that major chemical industry pump leaders are focusing on the commercial opportunities provided by “improved durability, repetitive accuracy and low maintenance”.
Interesting safety features too, including leak detection to deal with hazardous issues and health and safety risks will foster further interest, it predicts.
Rapid innovations in the chemical, steel, pharmaceutical, food and beverages, oil, and mining industries are expected to significantly improve demand for the chemical pumps market
Fact.MR analysts’ report
And while the firm’s citing of the Americas, Asia Pacific and Middle East as vital markets will not surprise, it also points towards Europe’s potential. While there is an assumption that the continent represents a mature market that offers only sluggish growth, the evidence suggests otherwise, says Fact.MR: “This situation can largely be attributed to the rapid rise in the number of end use industry participants across several countries in the region.
“In addition, the rapid innovations in the chemical, steel, pharmaceutical, food and beverages, oil, and mining industries are expected to significantly improve demand for the chemical pumps market within Europe.”
Supply chains are becoming less certain, thanks to the global effect of pandemic. Here in the UK, Brexit’s unsteadying influence on cross-border imports and exports has added an extra layer of concern.
Simultaneously, and fed by concerns regarding origin and supply, demand for supply chain accountability and for well- documented and transparent practice has risen.
The upshot of this is more chemicals being transported by a greater range of industries, whose participants can be held accountable by any element of their supply chain. Unsurprisingly the chemicals pumps market is predicted to be on a rise that is not expected to lose momentum until 2026.
Digitalisation of products in order to make them fit within the existing or planned automated set up within factories and plants will drive demand and interest in new pumping system technologies, not least because of the return on investment they offer.
Durability plays to several other current concerns in the process industries: sustainability and life cycle cost in particular. And when budgets limit the ability to invest heavily in new equipment, taking care of associated maintenance becomes still more important.
Sulzer marketing and communications manager, rotating equipment Alex Edwards outlines the problems that harsh chemical environments can present: “Generally, turbines, compressors and pumps are all subject to a variety of process- driven conditions that contribute to corrosion, erosion, fouling and various other process-related issues and can be managed through effective maintenance intervention.”
Thus rotating equipment in direct contact with the process media presents a challenge. However, he points out, one can reduce degradation by selecting the correct protective coating.
“In the harshest of operating conditions, solid and/or liquid particles can pass through the equipment causing erosion. This can result in moderate to severe material loss and change aerodynamic efficiencies significantly. If left unattended, it can even affect the strength of the critical components and lead to premature blade/vane wear and failure in service.”
Specialised coatings give effective protection against fouling and erosion, with their composition tailored to specific applications and including an aluminum base coat for corrosion protection plus inorganic sealer and a specialist non-stick final layer.
Rotating remedy
In the case of chemical manufacturing processes such as fertiliser production, rotating equipment maintenance is vital, with the emphasis on prevention rather than remedy, he cautions.
“Using a preventative maintenance approach to uphold the reliability and efficiency of equipment is an important strategy. In addition to this, retrofit projects enable new materials and component designs to be integrated with legacy equipment, extending their service life and reducing operating costs.”
Within plants and factories dependent upon large numbers of pumps, remanufacturing of impellers, balancing and bearing overhauls can be contained within scheduled maintenance intervals, with surface treatments applied to extend operational life, explains Sulzer Middlesbrough service centre manager Paul Richardson.
“At the centre of a pump’s design is the impeller, which provides an increase in the fluid head. As a result, impellers are subjected to the most damage, which can have a huge impact on efficiency, productivity and running costs. “Therefore, it is important to be able to source new impellers when they are required and, if necessary, take advantage of the latest improve- ments in design and materials technology to increase reliability.”
Creating replacement parts has become a much quicker process. The use of reverse engineering to design and manufacture enhanced components has rendered replacement a much speedier process. Improved flow geometry and manufacturing techniques including 5-axis milling or rapid prototyping techniques to print casting molds have led to significant performance and reliability gains.
Nevertheless, there are situations where retrofit and preventative maintenance are insufficient, advises Geoff VanLeeuwen, product management director for Blackmer.
Chemical pump technology is in demand beyond its key market thanks to the ability of products to tackle corrosion and other challenges. Often, though, the focus in pump purchasing generally is too greatly centred on price tag.
Says VanLeeuwen: “Facility managers who rely on industrial pumps for the various liquid-transfer duties in their manu- facturing processes can be excused if they occasionally think that once the pump has been purchased the majority of the heavy lifting has been completed.
“Identifying the right pump for the right process requires a lot of time and due diligence, from performance reviews to cost estimates, to even soliciting opinions from other manufacturers.” Studies suggest, he says, that pump purchase price comprises a mere 10% to 15% of total life-cycle cost. In fact it is one of five elements that ought to inform purchase decisions, he advises. These encompass capital, installation, operation, maintenance and decommissioning costs.
In chemical manufacturing industry, centrifugal pumps are often the default liquid transfer technology, states VanLeeuwen. This can have drawbacks when choosing purchases.
“The problem with this mindset is that it means that many chemical-processing systems have been designed around the needs of the pump, rather than the needs of the system. For example, design engineers will design their systems so that raw materials can be blended or heated in a way that their viscosity is brought to a level that enables them to be handled by a centrifugal pump,” he explains.
“In this case, they are reconditioning the material to fit the need of the pump, regardless of any potential life-cycle cost impact.”
The operator, in addition to getting the viscosity to a centrifugal- friendly level, must also ensure that the pump continues to operate at its Best Efficiency Point (BEP). Operating outside the BEP can result in shaft deflection that will place higher loads on the pump’s bearings and mechanical seal, which can damage the pump’s casing, impeller and back plate. This leads to higher maintenance and part-replacement, coupled with the costs required to keep the pump operating at its BEP that combine to increase total life-cycle costs.
Key considerations for installation are: additional costs for boring – a factor that adds to the price tag for cheaper to purchase vertical pumps; alignment issues; and any commissioning price.
The issue of operational costs highlights different approaches to sizing for PD and centrifugal pump motors, he adds. The former is sized according to bypass value set point, limiting energy consumed; the latter tends towards oversizing.
Many chemical-processing systems have been designed around the needs of the pump, rather than the needs of the system
Geoff VanLeeuwen, product management directo, Blackmer
There is also the matter of ancillary liquids employed, warns VanLeeuwen. Sealed pumps requiring a quench can substantially increase annual water costs if used at scale, for example.
Maintenance is to a significant extent dependent upon the number of ‘wear’ parts a particular pump possesses. However modern technologies have increased the effectiveness of remote and accurate predictive maintenance.
Finally, often excluded from life cost assessments, pump decommissioning or disposal, while rarely prohibitive are likely to be higher in sectors such as chemicals “if the pump has been used in the handling of hazardous, toxic, radioactive or any other materials that require environmental sensitivity”.
While these factors may vary in influence, the development of advanced remote pump-monitoring technologies promises to be a boon in optimising pump life-cycle costs, suggests VanLeeuwen, permitting the identification of operational inefficiencies sooner and more reliably, creating real-time operational transparency and significant cost savings for the operator.
Likewise, he says, remote Cloud-based pump-monitoring systems create opportunities to gather pump-performance data and store it for future use.
“The challenge is finding the best ways to use this data to observe and predict pump performance, with the goal of optimising it as it pertains to total life-cycle cost.”
