The Importance of Monitoring Booster Pumps
The start and stop functions on booster pumps require intensive monitoring to make sure they work safely and uniformly. Concerns about their functionality may make you drive to a remote location to check on them, but technology offers relief from tedious tasks that waste your time. They don’t require a manual inspection when you incorporate a SCADA system into your maintenance program. Anyone who works in the gas and oil, water and wastewater industries or experiences water quality concerns can benefit from an easier approach to monitoring booster pumps.
Understanding Booster Pump Monitoring
Booster pumps assist the collection and transport of solids and water in areas where there is low flow or a need to propel what’s inside the pipeline. By monitoring the performance of these pumps, you can prevent significant problems and avoid the consequences of malfunction such as pipe bursting, drops in pressure, or worse. SCADA monitoring can ensure the greatest efficiency and productivity of your pumping system by sending you alerts, as well as a steady supply of data.
Reviewing Booster Pump Functions
An impeller inside the booster pump resembles a fan that increases pipeline movement with spinning blades. An increase in water flow and pressure that the impeller produces improves the flow that facilities require to deliver water to homes, or sewage to treatment plants. The impeller not only moves what’s inside the pipeline, it creates significant pressure within the system. When built-up pressure reaches a dead end, the fluids stop flowing.
While the risk of a burst from a centrifugal booster pump overheating is low, the absence of flow prevents the dissipation of heat, consumes power and wastes money. However, displacement booster pumps create more severe concerns with overpressure. When deadhead situations occur, a pump that does not shut off continues to build up pressure and raise the potential of serious risks. A pump lockup or burst, overheated motor or broken shaft, can cause significant damage to equipment, risk of injury, or a serious biohazard situation.
Environmental Effects of Pump Malfunctions
To avoid an environmental catastrophe, pumps need to be monitored so they are always working at their best. If a pump were to fail and create too much pressure, a burst could occur leading to whatever is in the pipe now being in the environment. If a wastewater pump were to burst, sewage and other dangerous substances will leak out into the environment polluting the ground as well as nearby water sources. To avoid these types of incidents from occurring and to maintain a healthy environment, pump monitoring is a necessary action.
Implementing SCADA Monitoring
By implementing a supervisory control and data acquisition system, it allows you to monitor real-time data, control industrial processes, interact with pumps, sensors, motors, valves and create an events log. At High Tide Technologies, our cloud based monitoring system makes monitoring booster pumps and facilities easier. Our efficient SCADA software provides an inside look into your systems without having to do it yourself, or dispatch a worker to a remote site.
Conclusion
Because the risks of a malfunction increases with the added pressure, a SCADA system is needed to ensure that a large-scale systems malfunction doesn’t happen. This is especially true for industries such as oil & gas, and wastewater collection. If a systems malfunction were to occur in these industries a serious risk could be posed towards the environment as well as public safety.