Discover how AuCom optimised motor control at Egypt's Elhammam Pumping Stations, within tight deadlines through global collaboration and advanced technology.

Water hammer has the potential to cause significant damage to pumping systems. Most in the pumping industry have a tale to tell about burst or collapsed pipes, or broken or damaged valves, pressure gauges and even pumps.

Solving the water hammer problem requires either mitigating its effects or preventing its occurrence altogether. To this end, there are a number of solutions to consider when designing a pumping system, including electronic motor control.

Electronic motor control devices such as soft starters and variable frequency drives can be used to control the speed of the pump during starting and stopping. This allows for a more gradual increase or decrease in pump speed, preventing water column separation, flow reversal and sudden check valve closure – a few of the primary causes of water hammer.

AuCom helped progress the emergency water supply for Turkey’s capital city, Ankara by providing a soft starter solution in less than a third the normal manufacturing time. AuCom supplied 60 medium voltage soft starters to ensure a secure and reliable pumping solution to each of the five pump stations along the 130 kilometre pipeline.

After several unsuccessful attempts at using soft starters on their pumping system in the past, Cabanatuan City Water District (CCWD) was reluctant to risk more interruption to their critical municipal water supply.  However, a trial of AuCom soft starters proved so reliable that CCWD decided to invest in a long-term project to install AuCom starters throughout its infrastructure.

Running through the Central American nation of Panama, the Panama Canal has been an important conduit for international trade between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans for over 100 years. In 2016 the largest expansion of the trade route since its original construction was completed.

The capacity increase of the new canal has more than doubled, with the maximum ship size able to carry 5000 TEUs (terminal equivalent units). Vessels with capacity of more than 13,000 TEUs will be able to navigate the expanded canal system.

This feat of engineering has an overall program cost of $US 5.25 billion, and has involved shifting more than 50 million cubic metres of material (an Olympic-sized swimming pool has a 2500 cubic metres capacity).

Part of the expansion was the Pacific Access Channel, known as PAC4, which involved the excavation of some of that 50 million cubic metres in the form of a 6.1km long access channel for a set of new Pacific locks. AuCom distributer in the region, El Salvador-based Industrial Systems, has played a role in making the huge project happen.

When it comes to costs in water-related sectors such as water treatment, wastewater management and irrigation, the energy expense of pumping is a huge factor.

For some water utilities 95% of their budget is consumed by electrical costs. According to Water Online, USA water utilities consume 56 billion kilowatts costing $4 billion per annum. This equates to between 3- 4% of the entire country’s electricity consumption.

Another large pumping-related energy user in the water industry is irrigation.

As an example, analysis of data from the 2008 USDA Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey showed that the average energy use for irrigating crops in Nebraska alone would be equivalent to about 340 million gallons of diesel fuel annually if all pumps were powered with diesel engines.

According to a report by the New South Wales Farmers’ Association, audits of Australia irrigation farms have found that energy used in irrigation can account for upwards of 50% of a total farm energy bill. Although these statistics may seem staggering, there are strategies to reduce these costs.

“They are so simple but they do so much for me!” exclaimed Johnny Meerholz, proudly displaying the AuCom IMS2 soft starter he just installed. Electrical Supervisor for Mossel Bay Municipality (MBM), Johnny worked with CHI Control's Western Cape Branch Manager, Kevin Russell, to install over 100 IMS2 starters in 60 different clean water and sewerage pumping stations beginning in 2002.

With requirements ranging from 55 kW in a seaside station, to 400 kW in the Kleinbrak Filter Station, MBM uses AuCom soft starters to meet a challenging range of environments and hydraulic demands. As well as their reliability, Johnny was extremely pleased with the user friendly design and interface of the AuCom starters – “We have occasionally taken delivery of other soft starters in the past, but you have to have a university degree to program them. The IMS2 is so simple, I wouldn’t have anything else!”

The expertise of AuCom's local distributor helped Johnny to maximise the benefits of AuCom's soft starters to provide the residents of Mossel Bay with a reliable, cost effective pumping system.

AuCom soft starters have been used since the 1990s to drain water from the Channel Tunnel linking Great Britain to Europe.