Hydro was proud to participate in this year’s Empowering Pumps virtual Sustainability Summit. This year’s summit explored the vital intersection of environmental responsibility and industrial innovation in the pump and equipment industry.
The summit featured prominent voices including Hydro’s Dr. Gary Dyson, who champions innovative pump design and modification. Gary was joined by Tomas Dobrovolskis of Hidrostal North America, recognized for groundbreaking sustainable equipment solutions and Todd Bush of Decarbonfuse, a leader in industrial decarbonization strategies.
The discussion, led by Empowering Pumps & Equipment President, Vince Marino, shared perspectives on a more sustainable future in industrial operations, highlighting how companies are transforming their approaches to sustainability through cutting-edge product design, sophisticated manufacturing processes, and purposeful operational improvements.
You can watch this year’s summit here:
Learn more about Empowering Pumps and Equipment here.
Read more about Hydro’s commitment to sustainability and how we help end users achieve energy savings through Hydro Energy Edge.
Operating a pump off its design point has many drawbacks. Inefficiency and wasting energy across a throttled valve bothrequire more horsepower than an optimized system. Running away from the best efficiency point increases risk of degradation, which may cause recurring premature component failures due to higher radial loads, hydraulic instability, and other influences. These factors negatively affect reliability while simultaneously driving up the cost of equipment operation and maintenance. For this reason, opportunities to optimize a pump are extremely beneficial and have a very short payback period.
The benefits of modifying pump performance to better match system demand were demonstrated in a recent project undertaken at a Gulf Coast refinery. The refinery had a single-stage, double suction (BB2) pump where the required output had been greatly reduced from the original design. The mechanical seals were repeatedly failing, which resulted in frequent maintenance and seal replacements. The refinery partnered with Hydro, Inc to perform a field evaluation of the pump and develop a design upgrade to increase reliability and efficiency.
Many OEMs focus on the initial pump design and providing a higher peak efficiency. While this can provide energy savings, it misses some of the greatest gains available. With our history in developing solutions for the aftermarket, Hydro approaches energy efficiency differently. Our unique experience as a brand-agnostic company focused on end users’ existing installed equipment has provided us with insight into improving equipment performance by understanding how it operates as a part of the greater system. This has allowed us to provide significant energy savings for our partners, as shown in successful cases such as 
Hydro’s Energy Edge program takes advantage of our in-house engineering, field testing, remanufacturing, and parts capabilities to provide an end-to-end solution to improve energy usage and reliability. The process starts with getting the necessary design and operation data to perform a comprehensive analysis of current performance and identify opportunities for improvement. Depending on the findings, solutions can range from system operations recommendations to hydraulic modifications to a completely redesigned drop-in replacement. By providing a custom solution instead of an off-the-shelf replacement, Hydro not only optimizes performance, but minimizes cost, lead time, and risk by ensuring that the solutions fits into the existing equipment footprint.
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.