Beating the blockages at Rochfort Manor
Rochfort Manor a highly-desirable residential development on the outskirts of Carlow town in Ireland. With demanding flows and fibrous content, the pumps installed at Rochfort Manor Pumping Station had been frequently plagued by blockages and breakdowns.
This not only caused a surge in unplanned maintenance costs, but also major disruption, with breakdowns occurring every seven to ten days. As a live pumping station in a residential area, there was the added challenge of ensuring any work carried out did not disturb the residents and remained in operation throughout. Irish Water consulted experts at Campion Pumps who worked in partnership with Xylem to resolve the issues.
The two companies based their proposal on three core elements: blockage prevention, reduced maintenance costs and improved efficiency. Campion Pumps carried out a detailed site survey and using the Flygt ATU401 SCADA system collected data such as current power usage and flows from the existing pump station over a two-week period.
Following their analysis of this data and in consultation with Xylem Ireland, the deployment of two 7.3kW Flygt Concertors was recommended as the best option. In order to keep the station in action, this meant only one pump could be changed at a time.
The Flygt Concertor’s intelligent XPC functionality is capable of sensing the operating conditions of its environment and adapting its performance in real time suited the changing demands of the station. Should the pump detect a potential blockage, the adaptive N-hydraulics and anti-blockage protocols will run the N-type impeller back and forth repeatedly until the debris is cleared. The pump will carry out this operation 22 times before alerting an engineer, thus reducing unnecessary and expensive callout charges for reactive maintenance.
The XPC also delivers real time performance data, including: hours run, number of starts, kW consumed, current power, and number of anti-clogging cycles. This gives engineers total visibility and remote access to the pumps’ operations at all times.
Brendan Garry (Laois County Council) comments: “We haven’t had a single breakdown since the Concertor pumps were installed in May 2018. What’s more, performance figures have shown energy reductions of more than 70%.”
Kevin Devine, business development manager at Xylem Ireland, concludes: “This is a great working example of how Flygt Concertor can revolutionize operations under even the toughest of conditions.”
