Industrial Pumps Blog

Power plants need to be efficient: they can’t afford downtime as this is costly. The pumping system is at the center of a pumping plant and must be reliable and operate to maximum capacity at all times. A power plant is contracted to supplying its customers with their product. The inability to supply the product, due to mechanical and other failures, can result in severe financial consequences and potential loss of business. In addition overall running costs escalate while maintenance is undertaken so the effect can three fold if a power plant has downtime.

Power plant operators need to work in partnership with other organizations that provide advice and support to ensure their power plant runs efficiently and is technologically up-to-date.

Different power plants require different skills but the knowledge gained from one type of power plant can be extensively used in another. Power plant partners need to be able to provide solutions to increase production, improve reliability and reduce costs. A partner needs to be able to prove its experience and skills and to deliver results.

Power plants deal in many aspects of oil delivery, each requiring specialist knowledge. The techniques employed and the efficiencies learned in delivering one type of fluid can often be utilized in another type of fluid so working in partnership with an experience organization has multiple benefits.

Power plant partners combine the skills and knowledge gained from operating and advising others. It’s important to ensure that they have the ability to offer help and solutions to all areas of power plant management.

Introducing and implementing the solutions presented by power plant partners improves reliability and production rates ensuring that the product can be delivered on time to the customer. A power plant benefits from increased production and improved customer relations. Costs reduce and profitability increases.

Transporting millions of barrels of oil thousands of miles, from remote oil fields to refining centers, is a highly energy intensive process.  From oil well to the end-refinery, the oil passes along a complex pipeline and through various processing plants and tank farms as the various separation and treatment centers until it is ultimately a finished product ready for transport to the customer.

This is a very costly process in terms of energy consumption.

The challenge is four-fold – how to reduce energy consumption costs; how to maintain and improve operation uptime; how to reduce other operating costs e.g. maintenance; and how to reduce the associated carbon footprint.

Ten years ago, the challenge was simply how to keep the process running with minimal disruption – energy costs had little if any impact, but times have changed dramatically.

In today’s operating environments, energy is very expensive.  Increased competitive pressures mean companies have to seek out further cost reductions by seeking greater efficiencies elsewhere in the operation.

The driving center of the oil pipeline network is the pumping system used to move oil across vast distances and in the harshest environments on the planet, on land and under the sea.  It is the pumping systems which are the major consumers of energy and should be the focus of cost reduction measures.

By ensuring constituent pumping systems are energy efficient, significant cost reductions can be achieved in terms of energy usage.  This helps increase profitability and carbon footprint reduction to meet environmental targets, now and in the future.  Additionally, by reducing the time-to-failure rates and increasing the length of the maintenance cycle, operators can improve pipeline network uptime and create further significant operating cost reductions.