Pump alignment saves power

摘要

Awareness of energy efficiency is one of the minimum job qualifications for reliability engineers. In the summer of 1994, Jack Lambley, then an intern at the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Rock-savage site in the UK, was assigned the task of quantifying the effects on power consumption for misaligned process pumps. A surplus pump was overhauled, and new bearings were fitted. This pump was reinstalled, and water was recirculated in a suitably instrumented closed-loop arrangement. Prueftechnik GmbH loaned Lambley a modern laser-optic alignment instrument.