Centrifugal pump operation monitoring with motor phase current measurement

Centrifugal pumps often operate inefficiently because of their incorrect dimensioning and inefficient control. The economic potential of improving the pumping efficiency has generated a wide market for energy auditing products and services, which determine the prevailing energy efficiency of pump operation. Energy audits are commonly based on additional measurements that might be carried out for a short period of time, covering only a fraction of the pump operation cycle. Often the most feasible solution would be to use the existing measurements in the pumping system to determine its typical operation. Then, the correctness of pump dimensioning and the efficiency of the applied flow control method could be determined simultaneously for a large group of pumps, as there would be no requirements for additional measurement sensors on each device. In this paper, a current measurement-based approach to monitor centrifugal pump operation and its energy efficiency is studied. This approach allows a simple realization of energy audits for fixed-speed pumping systems, where only current consumption of the electric motor is measured. Approach is based on adjustable models for motor and pump operation, which in this case are configured for a laboratory pumping system. Factors affecting the estimation accuracy of the motor operation are also analyzed in the paper. According to the conducted tests with the laboratory setup, the motor shaft power can be estimated with the accuracy of 3.2%, and the pump flow rate with the accuracy of 16%. This accuracy class can be considered sufficient for energy auditing and monitoring purposes, since it allows detection of inefficiently operating pumps. After this, more accurate measurements with separate measurement instrumentation and more detailed pumping system energy efficiency analysis can be carried out. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.