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Podcast: Solutions Spotlight with Ares Panagoulias

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Ever wondered how to better understand equipment health but struggled with climbing the mountain of data available to come up with actionable information?

Listen to the latest podcast from Chemical Processing magazine, where our Director of Condition Monitoring and the Test Lab, Ares Panagoulias, talks about how to avoid data overload while still becoming more predictive in your asset management strategies.

Listen to the podcast below, or read the interview here.

Learn more about the Centaur condition monitoring solution and read some case studies of successful implementations of condition monitoring.

State of the Art Parts- Rerated Impeller

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Hydro Parts Solutions recently manufactured three impellers for a rerate project being developed through Hydro’s Rocky Mountain service center in Denver, CO. Hydro Global Engineering determined the new hydraulic design for the rerated pump, which required modifications to the casing and new impellers.

 

The end user chose to have the new impellers manufactured out of CA6NM using investment casting, which provides a smoother surface finish to slightly increase the impeller efficiency. Hydro Parts Solutions drove the project from casting package design through final machining, with the impellers being cast and finish-machined within 6 weeks.

The new pump design was successfully tested at Hydro’s performance test lab, validating the new hydraulics. The custom performance will help the midstream end user achieve their desired system flow with maximum reliability and minimum energy usage.

Explore Hydro Parts Solutions’ design process in this video case study.

Hydraulic Rerate Proven in Performance Test Lab

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Custom Hydraulics for the Midstream Market

This summer, Hydro completed a hydraulic rerate project for a major US midstream pipeline. The project was completed through Hydro South, Hydro’s southeastern US service center in Alpharetta, Georgia. The project was completed with testing support from the Hydro Performance Test Lab, Hydro’s 5000 HP test facility located in Chicago, IL, with engineering direction from Hydro Global Engineering, based in Manchester, UK.

The pipeline originally used two booster pumps and the use of a Drag Reducing Agent (DRA) to achieve the desired flow rate. To increase the overall flow capacity of the line and remove the need for the DRA, the end user specified a pump to be added to the system downstream of the booster pumps.

The pump performance specifications were developed by system engineers and communicated to Hydro. The pump’s original design condition was modified to provide the necessary differential pressure required for the desired flow rate – for today and in the future. This will be achieved without the use of DRA or with little added to the system.

Hydro modified an existing pump casing provided by the pipeline and designed new impellers to meet the specific hydraulic performance requirements. Using computational fluid dynamics and advanced modeling, the new impellers were manufactured and installed by Hydro, then sent to Hydro’s test facility for hydraulic performance testing.

To provide an exact performance match, a larger impeller diameter size was selected for the first test and subsequently trimmed to meet performance within API 610 tolerances. Along with the hydraulic performance test, the mechanical integrity of the pump was measured with a vibration test, mechanical resonance test, and a bearing housing temperature stabilization test. All this information validates the quality of the rebuild and ensures a reliable machine.

The pipeline has a limited ‘budget’ of DRA concentration allowed pipeline wide. This concentration is measured in part per million (ppm). By adding the hydraulically rerated pump to the branch line, the DRA ppm budget can be allocated elsewhere in the pipeline. This will add efficiency and increase overall throughput.

Hydro is very fortunate to support critical industries like midstream pipelines in ensuring safe, reliable, and cost-effective pumps and rotating equipment.

Learn more about Hydro’s Performance Test Lab and Engineering Services

Challenging MTBF Expectations

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Improving Maintenance Intervals in Demanding Applications

Some services are inherently difficult due to factors such as fluid quality or multiple disparate operating points.  These factors are an inherent part of the process and cannot be changed to improve reliability. Harsh applications can be a costly prospect, both in overhaul costs and in the time and labor required for frequent servicing. Many times we become caught in the perception that there is no improvement to be had for these services. A short mean-time-between-failures (MTBF) becomes routine and expected, and maintenance activities and parts procurement are built around this expectation.  

It’s important that processes are built around historical run times to anticipate needs in the short term. However, it is equally important to take a step back and ask– “is this maintenance interval really acceptable or is there something that I can do to improve it?” An end user in the Canadian oil sands industry decided to take on that challenge when faced with a problematic bitumen froth transfer pump. This end user partnered with Hydro’s Scotford facility in Alberta to develop a series of upgrades that improved operating life while simultaneously reducing the cost of repair. 

Read the full case study in World Pumps July/August 2023 edition.

Learn more about our Hydro Scotford service center.

Contaminant-Free Environment for Critical Services

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Pump Solutions for Clean Applications

Many critical pump applications require sanitization and assembly in a clean environment to prevent contaminants that could put the service at risk of combustion or affect the purity of the end product. To better meet our customers’ clean service needs, Hydro has installed a state-of-the-art clean room at our HydroTex Deer Park facility.

Hydro’s Deer Park clean room allows decontamination of refurbished pumps in a controlled environment. Cleaned components are inspected to ensure the absence of contaminants using a black light and are individually packaged after inspection. Upon decontamination of all components, the full pump is assembled in the clean room environment using stringent control procedures to ensure cleanliness of the equipment is maintained. The assembled pump is packaged in a sealed environment in preparation of delivery to the end user.

Since its inception in 2021, Deer Park’s clean room has become the facility of choice for various oxygen, nitrogen, and chlorine pump end users in the Houston and greater Gulf Coast regions. We are proud to add this new service to our pump subject matter expertise and industry-leading refurbishment standards.  With this winning combination, Hydro continues support our customers in ensuring safe and reliable pump operation while reducing their total cost of equipment ownership.

Capability in Action

An industrial gas customer providing medical-grade oxygen had been sending their O2 pumps for refurbishment to the overseas OEM, who does not have a US facility. HydroTex Deer Park repaired and decontaminated their O2 pumps in their dedicated clean room.

Being able to find a reliable, qualified supplier that was local to their facility saved the end user valuable time and ensured availability of this critical, lifesaving application.

Visit our HydroTex facility in La Porte.