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Visitors to most trade shows expect to see bigger, higher-powered products that promise to produce more, more, more.

At WEFTEC 2009, ITT Corporation is showing water and wastewater customers how to consume less – with more efficient products and technologies that reduce the demand for energy, lower operating costs and trim the embedded carbon footprint associated with treating and transporting water.

The ITT strategy meets a pressing need for managers of municipal, industrial and commercial water systems. Electricity costs can consume between 20 and 40 percent of a water or wastewater utility's total operating budget. With new pumping and mixing technologies, variable-frequency drives, high-efficiency aeration and disinfection products – as well as a systems approach to serving customers – ITT is helping its customers to reduce their total energy costs by 20 to 60 percent.

"Improving the efficiency of water and wastewater operations has been an overlooked opportunity for many customers," said Peter Johansson, Director of Strategy and Business Development, ITT Fluid Technology. "Today, reducing energy use is both an economic necessity and an environmental imperative. No company is more capable or committed than ITT to helping water systems operate more efficiently and use less energy."

Pumps and mixers
Pumps are the largest single consumer of electricity in the water industry. One 75-horsepower pump, operating continuously, consumes about $20,000 in electricity each year. Water and wastewater operations tend to be populated by large numbers of oversized pumps operating continuously – and ITT research suggests that many of them are twice as large as they would need to be in an optimally efficient operation.

Each of these oversized pumps generates thousands of dollars in wasted electricity expense each year, and adds environmental and maintenance costs that could be avoided.

• Every 13 kilowatt hours of electricity represents about 14 pounds of CO2 emissions by one common measurement, so better pump efficiency can play a major role in reducing greenhouse gases.
• The energy wasted in running at higher speeds than needed converts to heat and vibration in the pump, which can lead to increased pump wear, higher maintenance costs, and even equipment failure.

The pumps and mixers that ITT is showing at WEFTEC demonstrate company-wide innovations to boost efficiency and reduce operating costs. The ITT Flygt N-pump now features a unique adaptive N-impeller that virtually eliminates clogs and is guaranteed to reduce energy consumption by 25 percent. ITT Goulds is introducing a reverse-osmosis pump with high-efficiency hydraulics and other improvements that reduce total cost of ownership. A new submersible mixer, utilizing a hybrid permanent-magnet motor, has been shown to improve operating efficiency by 15 points to greater than 85 percent, and multiple ITT products now employ premium-efficiency AC motors that dramatically reduce energy needs compared to standard AC motors.

Variable Speed Drives
Along with the hydraulic and mechanical innovations inside its pumps and mixers, ITT offers a range of controllers that actively match the delivered hydraulic power of pumping and mixing equipment to the specific demand of the application. They control the flow and pressure delivered by varying the speed of the pump, rather than operating the pump at constant speed and throttling the flow with a valve.

Customers of ITT Hydrovar® Variable Speed Controllers – designed for quick, easy installation on pumps commonly used in water and wastewater applications – achieve energy savings of up to 70 percent compared to fixed-speed pumps, and often produce a full return on investment within two years.

For pumps where an integrated, motor-mounted approach is not feasible, ITT PumpSmart® variable frequency drives and control software improve operating efficiency of individual pumps, and multiple pumps in tandem. For example, a wastewater lift station in the resort town of Lake George, N.Y., operates six 70-horsepower ITT Flygt submersible pumps controlled by ITT PumpSmart drives. This solution replaced an inefficient lift station that employed oversized and aging 150-horsepower pumps – saving $30,000 a year in energy costs alone.

The energy savings are big because of the "cube law" relating power to pump speed, which states that power consumed or produced changes in proportion to the rate of change of the speed "cubed" – to the third power. Translated to pumping systems, the law means that by lowering a pump's speed by 10 percent to reduce the flow delivered by 10 percent, the energy required drops by 27 percent. A 30-percent reduction in pump speed reduces the required energy by 66 percent. Since pumps rarely are required to operate at 100% of rated flow, by varying pump speed to match the flow to system performance, substantial energy reductions are possible.

ITT Hydrovar and ITT PumpSmart variable frequency drives produce savings in other ways.

• By allowing the selection of properly sized pumps, customers can reduce their initial capital cost for pumping equipment and piping, as well as for wet well and pump station design and construction.
• It is also possible to eliminate many of the flow control valves used in a traditional fixed-speed system design, and with the SmartFlow feature, it is possible to eliminate flowmeters for most applications.
• ITT PumpSmart drives provides the ability to sense system anomalies, and automatically shut down the pump before damage occurs – for example, if the pump start-up occurs against a closed discharge valve or with a closed suction valve.
• By enabling multi-pump control and programmable startup and shutdown profiles, pump wear and system water hammer is minimized
• With active controls on pumps, designers are able build in flexibility for future system and process changes that otherwise would require large capital cost to accommodate.

All of these features combine to reduce maintenance costs and the total cost of ownership for the pumping equipment.

Remote Condition Monitoring
Real-time condition monitoring of pump stations and rotating equipment is another way ITT can help to lower operating and energy costs. The company offers ITT ProSmart™ and ITT ATU400 solutions that monitor operating and performance parameters of high value rotating machinery. By setting alarms levels, owners can be automatically notified of problems before they impact processes or shut down operations. The systems collect critical information that can turn maintenance into a planned activity instead of a reactive need, helping pumping systems to run as efficiently as possible.

Treatment Efficiency
In addition to moving water more efficiently, ITT technology gives customers treatment options that are cost-effective and energy efficient.

At WEFTEC, the company announced that users of ITT Sanitaire Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) systems for secondary wastewater treatment can update to new control software as a field upgrade that requires no new wiring. The new software provides more advanced controls, with multiple features that improve efficiency of an entire wastewater treatment operation.

Additionally, aeration and disinfection technologies recently introduced by ITT help to lower energy and operating costs. Aeration for biological treatment consumes more energy, by far, than any process in a wastewater treatment plan. An energy-efficient aeration system combining ITT mixers, diffusers, and controls with high-efficiency, purpose-designed blowers can reduce energy costs for this activity by up to 50 percent.

Using Sanitaire fine-bubble diffusers, a wastewater treatment plant in Parma, Italy lowered its energy costs by 40 percent – from a demand of 10.6 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) to 6.5 million kWh per year, saving over 410,000€ per year, based on 10€/KW/hr.

ITT WEDECO ozone generators are designed to offer the industry's highest ozone concentration yields with the lowest demand for energy. The new SMO900 ozone generator was designed to close the gap between medium and large ozone solutions, offering high efficiency and low cost delivery.

Similarly, ITT WEDECO systems for UV disinfection – including a new all-outdoor system announced at WEFTEC based on the popular TAK platform – employ highly efficient lamps and other technologies to improve energy efficiency.

A Systems Approach
The ITT Water and Waste Water business represents more than 6,000 employees worldwide, with production facilities on four continents and serving more than 140 countries. These professionals supply, sell and support products for virtually every aspect of treating and transporting water. With customers at hundreds of thousands of municipal, commercial and industrial water systems, the installed base of ITT water-system products is as least twice as large as any other manufacturer.

The comprehensive product portfolio, unsurpassed experience and global team of application specialists make ITT unique. Unlike any other company, ITT takes a systems approach to energy efficiency and performance optimization, helping customers to design recurring savings into their systems and operations.

The company's sales force is trained to provide a consultative, analytical approach to product recommendations, drawing on the company's unsurpassed knowledge and experience. The ITT Energy Performance Services unit is the industry's leading provider of pump system optimization, helping to make water systems more efficient using pumps from any ITT value center – or using variable frequency drives to improve the efficiency of rotating equipment from other manufacturers.

"Globally, the common denominator in today's water and wastewater industry is the requirement to do more with less," Johansson said. "Whatever the application, our customers are being challenged to achieve better results while reducing the demand for energy and the total cost of the operation. ITT understands this need, and at WEFTEC we are demonstrating our commitment to help customers to meet it with the industry's most energy-efficient products, backed by world-leading knowledge and support."

About ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company operating on all seven continents in three vital markets: water and fluids management, global defense and security, and motion and flow control. With a heritage of innovation, ITT partners with its customers to deliver extraordinary solutions that create more livable environments, provide protection and safety and connect our world. Headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., the company generated 2008 sales of $11.7 billion. Flygt, WEDECO, Leopold, Sanitaire, Goulds, Lowara, Vogel, Flowtronex, PumpSmart, Bell & Gossett, OPTIFLOW, Ecocirc and HYDROVAR are registered trademarks of ITT Corporation or its subsidiaries. For more information, visit www.itt.com.

SOURCE: Xylem Inc.