Durgesh Jha, Middle East and Africa sales leader – reliability solutions at Emerson Automation Solutions, has highlighted the challenges most industrial pump operators face and the solutions producers must keep an eye out for 

Pumps are essential in the daily operations of industrial oil production processes however, the challenge most operators face is that these pumps begin to degrade as soon as they’re running. This degradation cycle reveals a roster of potential risks that producers must keep an eye out for. Fluid loss is one of those risks which can effectively be reduced through dual seals but for a compromised reservoir tank on an unmonitored pump, this can mean serious complications that can lead to the depletion of seal fluid levels from lack of lubrication and eventually, seal damage.

The challenge for African hydrocarbon producers

Hydrocarbon producers in Africa often have a higher carbon intensity of oil production than their global peers accounting for about 40 percent higher carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per barrel due to most of their assets being offshore where inspection and maintenance prove to be a major challenge. With the global shift towards sustainability, stringent laws and regulations are being built around greenhouse gas emissions reduction where it is becoming imperative for producers to reduce their fugitive emissions through the improvement of their overall operations from improving leak detection and repair, installing vibration and temperature sensors, to applying state-of-the-art seals which can all be enabled with predictive maintenance.   

What if you had a cost effective, easy to apply solution for monitoring these pumps 24/7?

Pumps are, without question, significant players for maintaining production schedules. In process plants, as many as 90% of process pumps are monitored manually or not monitored at all. Statistically, pumps will fail or suffer degraded operations every 12 months. This cycle provides a great opportunity for producers to deploy cutting edge technologies for pump monitoring that can predict failures and make it simple to take proactive measures in safety, regulations, and shutdowns. 

Each operation is different which is why it is highly important to carefully evaluate the factors at play in selecting and deploying solutions. These factors can be the current pump installation, maintenance and operational challenges faced by the team, current and future KPIs, budget, and return on investment. 

Wireless monitoring of key parameters of a pump using pervasive sensors is an established solution for the past decade which has helped the industry make the leap from reactive to predictive maintenance. Emerson’s wireless vibration and temperature monitoring is one of the pioneering technologies that leveraged on wireless solutions to improve data collection in pumps.

Edge Analytics lends another avenue for the industry to monitor their assets. Emerson’s Edge Analytics device AMS Asset Monitor can be installed near to the pump to collect vibrations and other process parameters and deliver embedded prescriptive analytics to determine pump condition while broadcasting the results of the analysis in an easy-to-understand format.

These solutions enable operators to be proactive in the way they maintain their operations offering a wide range of opportunities to improve their KPIs, make relevant decisions based on analytics, learn more about their operations with predictive models, and scale up to enterprise-wide pump monitoring.

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