Spun Out: Is It Time for A Pump Revolution in the Chemical Industry?

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The Air In There

While air loss has been a constant concern, early ADSs were designed to battle stalling and icing. It was only once those performance inhibitors were conquered that designers turned their attention to the pump’s air consumption.

One of the first ADSs designed for energy efficiency featured a dial that could be used to tune the operating speed by restricting the amount of air that entered the pump. It’s a fact that a slower running pump is more efficient. For example, a dial-in ADS running at full throttle may consume 50 standard cubic feet per minute (scfm) of air to pump 100 gallons per minute (gpm) of fluid.

Using the dial, the incoming compressed air can be dialed back to 35 scfm, where the pump will transfer the liquid at a flow rate of 80 gpm. This is a 20 % reduction in flow rate, accompanied by a 30 % reduction in air consumption, which makes the pump more efficient.

Taking Air Efficiency to the Next Level

While the dial-in ADS represented an undoubted advance in AODD pump operation, there were still more fields that needed to be plowed if pump performance was to hit the sweet spot in optimized air consumption. That day finally came in 2013 with the development of a new ADS technology that featured a revolutionary air control spool, which is shaped, more or less, like an hourglass. This innovation was driven by an evaluation of the pressure dynamics that occur within the AODD pump during its operation.

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Diaphragma Pumps

Saving up to 60% of Pressurized Air with in AODD Pumps

This evaluation revealed that air consumption was significantly impacted by an increase in pressure at the end of each diaphragm stroke. When the shaft would come to a full stop, a shift signal would be sent to indicate the flow of air to cease. However, there was a small time lag between the stopping of the shaft and the sending of the signal, meaning that the full compressor force continued to push air into the chamber, which was not doing any actual work.

The function of the air control spool reduces the amount of air, which drastically reduces the amount of “wasted” energy that had been “force fed” into the pump. This allows the AODD pump to experience up to 60 % savings in air consumption, while delivering more yield per scfm than AODD pump models that feature legacy ADSs.

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