Sulzer has introduced the Sulzer Energy Optimization Service, a program designed to enhance energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. According to the company, this service aims to establish a new benchmark for best practices in optimizing centrifugal pumps across energy-intensive industries, including power generation, oil and gas, chemicals, and water desalination.
The Sulzer Energy Optimization Service combines digital analysis, machine learning, and continuous monitoring to reduce carbon emissions, improve reliability, and lower energy costs. According to Sulzer, boosting global pump efficiency by just 1% could save approximately 59 TWh of electricity—equivalent to New Zealand’s annual energy consumption. In some cases, pump efficiency could be improved by as much as 20–30%.
Ravin Pillay-Ramsamy, Services Division president at Sulzer said: “Inefficient and unreliable pumps cost operators in the industrial sectors millions of dollars in unnecessary downtime, energy costs and carbon emissions every year. Sulzer Energy Optimization Service offers a comprehensive solution that tackles this inefficiency – from identification through to improvement and monitoring.”
“A pilot customer in Spain will now save €1 million in energy costs and over 2,300 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year as a result of energy optimization improvements identified by the Service,” added Pillay-Ramsamy. “By rerating five pumps, energy efficiency increased from 72% to 83% saving the operator 5,000MWh in electricity every year.”
Sulzer’s expert team prepares a customized proposal outlining various options to restore the pump’s operation to its best efficiency point through engineered retrofits. These options may include hydraulic re-rates, specialized coatings, optimized wear clearances, and more.
Each solution is evaluated based on operational costs, required investment, downtime, payback period, and guaranteed efficiency improvements. The upgrades are then carried out by Sulzer’s experienced retrofit team, which has completed over 4,000 retrofit projects worldwide since 2010. This team is further supported by a global network of more than 120 service locations.
After the retrofit, Sulzer offers a performance agreement to ensure sustained reliability and efficiency. This includes access to Blue Box, Sulzer’s proprietary machine learning technology that transforms pump performance data into actionable insights.
Ravin added: “For operators who are constantly challenged to do more with less, making energy efficiency improvements is a win-win. With pumps accounting for 20% of the world’s electricity demand, we want to offer a streamlined, futureproofed way for customers to improve their energy efficiency regardless of their pump OEM. To do so, we’ve combined the competence of our people and longstanding engineering expertise with our proprietary innovations and wrapped them in a collaborative and customer-centric approach. Altogether we believe this solution creates a new best practice standard for pump operation that goes above and beyond in supporting operators to remain future-ready.”
Source :Sulzer
