MechChem Africa September-October 2025

⎪ Water, wastewater and pumping solutions ⎪

pump. The wasted energy when parallel pumping with one strong pump and one weaker one is typically in the 15-20% range. For two mismatched 4 000 kW pumps connected in parallel, continuous and un necessary power losses of between 600 and 800 kW may occur. For a 24/7 operation on an industrial tariff of, say, R1.50/kWh, losses in the order of R1-million per month could accrue. “This makes the rapid intervention to restore the failing pump very cost-effective,” Rosen points out. The AVEVA World presentation At the AVEVA World Annual Congress 2025 in April of this year, TAS Online and AVEVA delivered a joint presentation on the successful combination of PumpMonitor with AVEVA CONNECT, which helped the South African gold mine minimise its pump losses. Held in San Francisco earlier this year, this is a big annual event for AVEVA end users and their partners, which attracts over 3 000 people, says Rosen. The TAS PumpMonitor presentation highlighted how raw data from the pumps, normally collected for the mines' digital control centre, was also made available to TAS Online in real time via AVEVA’s Connect Data services. “Data from pumps, including suction and discharge pressures, flow rates and power consumption, don't mean anything on their own. It's only when you relate these to the specific pump’s performance curve that you can gain a clear idea of how well or how poorly a pump is performing. This is what TAS Online has been doing for years, but this is the first time we have been able to plot and track a pump’s performance on a pump curve in real time. “We are now able to accurately track and compare the operating efficiency of each pump to determine whether it is good or bad, by plotting the data onto each individual pump’s performance and efficiency curves. This makes even the smallest deviation away from the ideal efficiency zone of every dewa tering pump transparent, enabling in-time targeted action to be taken to minimise losses and maximise the specific energy efficiency of each pump,” Rosen explains. There are also times when the mine only needs to run one of the two parallel pumps, which enables the system to recalibrate itself, resulting in more accurate performance track ing. “Because there is only one flowmeter per riser column, we can accurately measure the flow rate of an individual pump without hav ing to calculate how the flow is shared, which requires the use of other data like the motor power,” he adds. Having data in the CONNECT cloud means

that all South African mines can now access near-real-time performance monitoring, with out impacting local network infrastructure. It also enables pump maintenance teams to have 24/7 access to accurate performance data from anywhere. “The value of this cannot be overstated,” said Rosen at AVEVA World. “Power costs amount to 90% of the total life cycle cost of a typical water pump; pumping systems use 40% of electric motor consump tion in industrialised countries; the average energy wastage in pumping systems is in the

15-40% range, and, based on UNIDO pump system audits, energy savings in the order 10-20% have routinely been demonstrated by returning performance to best possible efficiency,” he argues. “Pump performance is also a very reliable indicator of pump condition. Operating pumps at best efficiency improves pump reliability and the wear life of all components, including bearings and seals,” concludes Rosen, adding that this is worth unpacking in a future article. www.tasonline.co.za

The latest version of TAS PumpMonitor enables direct access to raw engineering data from a client's pumps for analysis by PumpMonitor, with results relayed back to the client’s control centre within seconds.

The new TAS Online PumpMonitor with AVEVA CONNECT offers a holistic approach to pump system management by tracking the performance of every pump against its corresponding performance curve. Collecting, monitoring and analysing the data helps operators quantify each pump's performance, understand the required demand, address operational and maintenance issues, and verify and optimise pump efficiency.

Relaying PumpMonitor results back to an AVEVA Dashboard connected to the mine’s SCADA system enables pumping efficiency to be optimised in real-time.

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