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4. Maintenance Costs

Unanticipated downtime and lost production play a huge role in the pump’s total life-cycle cost. In other words, a pump that is down for maintenance is not moving liquid, which means the line is not producing product. While all maintenance is bound to take the pump out of service for some period of time, there are some pump technologies, such as sliding vane, that allow simple maintenance duties to be performed without having to remove the pump from the line. This will shorten the amount of time that the pump needs to be out of service. All of these things make it imperative to understand a pump’s anticipated maintenance needs before it is purchased.

The ultimate impact of maintenance costs is usually tied to the number of wear parts that the pump possesses. Pump technologies like centrifugal, sliding vane and AODD have relatively few wear parts – things like seals, vanes, O-rings and diaphragms – that are easy to replace at low cost. These part-replacement costs usually total less than 20 % of the cost of a new pump over its lifetime.

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On the other hand, technologies like progressive cavity, screw and internal gear pumps can feature maintenance, repair and replacement costs that can approach or exceed 80 % to 90 % of the pump’s Capex cost. These types of pumps operate via highly precisioned machined metallic components that are expensive to produce. That’s why these types of pumps are often called “throwaway” pumps; they are used until they break down and then replaced because replacement is more economical than repair.

Another component of maintenance costs is preventative maintenance. This is critical if the operator hopes to reduce or eliminate unanticipated downtime in any pumping processes. Because each pump application is unique, pumps can seem fickle at times. While the operator can determine a desired target life for the pump, the reality is that, if left unchecked, unexpected failures will cause costly pump downtime.

A preventative-maintenance plan can combat this – if the plan is properly considered and makes use of the past operational history of similar pumps used in similar applications. Making well-considered assumptions regarding pump maintenance based on past history can go a long way in building a maintenance plan that can anticipate and mitigate any problems before they occur. This is another area where the recent advances in remote monitoring and data storage of a pump’s operational history can help ease the burden on preventative maintenance. Some manufacturers are now offering phone apps to help track, monitor, operate and keep notes on the maintenance needs of their installed assets.

One final maintenance-related consideration for the operator is to determine whether or not it would be economically wise to purchase a spare pump that can be inserted into the pumping system on an as-needed basis. Determining the necessity of this, Capex expense will also play into the calculations for total life-cycle-costs.

5. Decommissioning Costs

The final cost in a pump’s lifetime is its decommissioning cost, or the cost to remove it from operation and dispose it. While these costs are typically not prohibitive, if the pump has been used in the handling of hazardous, toxic, radioactive or any other materials that require environmental sensitivity, the costs to decommission them will be higher. When disposing of pumps that have handled hazardous materials, the number and type of regulatory requirements that must be satisfied will also play a role in determining the decommissioning costs and their ultimate effect on total life-cycle costs.

What Have We Learned?

When any type of list like this is created, an expected question might be: “So, which of these costs is most important if you want to optimise total life-cycle cost?” Let’s look at them from least to most significant.

The one category that generally has a fixed cost that is least open to fluctuation or interpretation is decommissioning costs. Many operators may not even consider those costs as part of the total life-cycle cost package.

After that, we’ve found that Capex and operational costs (as they relate to energy usage and pump efficiency) are not seen as a make or break proposition for the pump user. While it’s popular to market industrial operations as “green” or environmentally friendly, the truth is that no one makes a purchasing decision based on the pump’s efficiency – and there really is no compelling reason to do so because the economics of operational efficiency don’t really matter for pumps that have motors smaller than 100 horsepower, and that’s where most industrial pumps operate.

Maintenance costs are important because pump reliability is a key component in ensuring that the pumping system meets the demands of the operation. However, the costs of maintenance are usually built into operating budgets through the purchase of spare inventory or the performance of prescheduled maintenance routines, making this a life-cycle expense that can usually be predicted pretty reliably.

That leaves installation cost, which may be the least understood of all of the categories. This also means that it offers the best opportunity for improvement. Most operators ignore or care little about installation costs, viewing them as nothing more than the “cost of doing business.” However, this is an area that is ripe for improved optimisation, especially in new installations. Many operators can fall into the trap of relying too heavily on what has been done previously on-site or what has been done in other company facilities, without truly realising how unique each individual installation really is.

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This can lead to a situation where it is hard to know what the true costs of the installation are and their ramifications regarding total life-cycle cost. These installation costs include not only foundation work, piping, etc., but also any auxiliary systems that will need to be made part of the pumping operation. These can include priming, liquid conditioning, heating, closed-cooling, filtration, vacuum and pigging systems, some of which can be exorbitantly expensive to install.

Conversely, rather than considering the need and cost of auxiliary systems, some operators will fall back on the mindset that all problems can be solved through the incorporation of a control valve or variable frequency drive (VFD). Control valves are useful to modulate the level of pressure that is needed to get the pump working properly – another example of building the system around the pump – but a more economical solution can be buying a pump that can inherently produce the application’s required pumping pressure.

VFDs have become more affordable over the years, so some operators have begun to think that they can be a silver-bullet solution to everything that ails pump operation. While VFDs do offer a lot of functionality and flexibility and can make the system very nimble, they can wreak havoc on motors by introducing electronic pulses that will compromise the performance and reliability of the motor and other downstream pump components. Further, speed control itself is not a fix-all solution. A VFD will not help if a system’s operating range is outside a pump’s performance envelope.

Where Do We Go from Here?

People in the process industries are knowledgeable, but because of the demands of their jobs they need a path of least resistance that accommodates the time, resource and production constraints that are placed on today’s plant operators. The simple fact is that somehow, someway today’s industry expects to achieve more output with less resources, which includes actually knowing all of the intricacies of an effectively functioning process system.

This has led more and more facility managers to turn to third-party Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractors for assistance. EPCs are tasked with all design, procurement and construction tasks while ensuring that the entire project is completed on time and on budget. The use of EPCs has become more and more prevalent in recent years, to the point that hiring an EPC is now essentially considered an unavoidable first step when designing, outfitting and commissioning a manufacturing plant. And EPCs can be a valuable resource – if they have the knowledge and expertise to know the ins and outs of the operation they are building and are able to answer any questions their clients may have so they can truly meet their needs. However, some EPCs prioritise short-term guarantee periods and ignore long-term life-cycle costs. Additionally, EPCs don’t pursue system optimisation. Instead, they are incentivised to design and construct systems that meet only the minimum requirements that are outlined in their contracts.

As mentioned earlier, the arrival of advanced remote pump-monitoring technologies promises to be a boon in optimising pump life-cycle costs. These new monitoring systems fill a niche in what has come to be known as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT). IIOT is defined as a network of physical devices, systems and platforms that use embedded communication technology to share the operational intelligence of industrial machines. It combines data technology and machine learning to bring together sensor data and machine-to-machine communication technologies. This enables the identification of operational inefficiencies sooner and more reliably, creating real-time operational transparency and significant cost savings for the operator.

The driver behind remote Cloud-based pump-monitoring systems is creating the ability to gather pump-performance data and store it for future use. These systems are nothing more than augmented ways to aggregate data. The challenge is finding the best ways to use this data to observe and predict pump performance, with the goal of optimising it as it pertains to total life-cycle cost.

Conclusion

Many pump technologies are hundreds of years old and there really hasn’t been a new, significant way in over a century to move 10 gallons of water, 10 feet in 10 seconds. But there are still exciting ways to improve the total life-cycle costs – if the operators of manufacturing facilities will, as they say, stop “kicking the can down the road.” Granted, these time-strapped individuals do their best to create and operate manufacturing processes that meet the demands of strict and oftentimes unforgiving production schedules.

That being said, by working in harmony with pump manufacturers who are constantly looking to improve the effectiveness and reliability of their products – as evidenced by the new remote monitoring tools – they can identify and incorporate pump technologies with optimised life-cycle costs that will reflect positively on the manufacturing operation’s ability to meet production demands and improve the bottom line.

* The author is a Product Management Director for Blackmer and PSG

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