What is the range of products that offered by the company for HVACR industry?
Grundfos has a long history of supplying superior, intelligent, quality pumps that guarantee performance and reliability in the HVAC industry. Our controls and integrated or external frequency converters ensure maximum system intelligence, flexibility and the lowest lifecycle costs. Pumps are the heart of any circulation system and accurately controlled circulation is the key to the users’ comfort and the efficiency of the entire system.
How unique are your products as compared to your competitors?
Grundfos’ electronic speed control pumps give intelligent pump operations that always match system loads. Our solutions deliver high efficiency and a minimum of energy consumption. Furthermore, operating profiles can be adjusted to meet both seasonal and climatic changes, so we make sure your systems adapt to the environmental changes.
What differentiates us is our value driven approach. We not only manufacture the world class and energy efficient pumps, but we also take care that we deliver cooling or heating demand as needed in the most environment friendly and sustainable way. We get the digitally enabled benefits from better monitoring, better control, better information for maintenance etc.
What are the growth drivers of your business? Which sector does generate the maximum demand?
Our growth is driven by increasing demand for energy efficient and intelligent pumping systems to achieve energy, climate change and water related sustainability goals. For commercial buildings, more than 40 per cent of the building’s energy consumption is attributed to air conditioning, thus, HVAC industry generates a significant demand for energy efficient and intelligent pumping systems.
How energy efficient are your products as compared to your competitors?
We say, “Pump is more than a pump”, as is evident from the latest and integrated technologies that Grundfos is bringing into the air-conditioning market.
Magna3 is one of the most cutting-edge innovation from Grundfos stable. The product has been improvised over its earlier versions to suit a range of applications, which includes CHW application, boosting, radiant cooling, hot water recirculation to name a few. EEI (Energy Efficiency Index) is a measure of seasonal efficiency with measurements taken at 25, 50, 75 and 100 per cent of flow for defined periods of time. The lower the EEI, the smaller the amount of energy used by the pump in a year. The EEI applies to circulating pumps, and the only way to achieve a low EEI is with a variable-speed drive
To put that EEI into perspective, the European Energy-related Products Directive requires a maximum EEI of 0.27 from January 2013, reducing to 0.23 from August 2015. This requirement for ever-more efficient pumps is driven by the EU target of halving the energy used by circulating pumps by 2020, equivalent to the output of six medium-sized coal-fired power stations Magna3 scores lowest on EEI of 0.17, turning out to be the most efficient circulator in its class.
When it comes to innovation, Magna3 stands out as it is more than a pump. With permanent magnet motor, stator is more compact which reduces copper losses. The impeller, which is a composite material reduces the energy losses across the impeller blades.
Magna3 has differential pressure probe and temperature probe in-built with onboard electronics, which allows the pump to run on various control modes based on constant pressure or temperature, constant curve and differential pressure or temperature. The capability of setting a maximum flow as an aid to commissioning and system operation can be set from the display of the pump itself, which replicates the throttling aspect of balancing valves. The capabilities of flow limiting can be further enhanced with a feature called Auto Adapt, which uses built-in intelligence to gather information about operation data and conditions and reset operating parameters automatically if required.
Magna3 has an analogue I/O point that can take external set point influence from a sensor and modulate its speed accordingly. The pumps can directionally also play the role of BTU meters with an addition of external temperature transmitter. Information can be fed to a BMS based on recognised global protocols and shown on each pump’s integral display.
With the increased usage of control and automation in HVAC plant room and with the advent of integrated control strategies to arrive at lowest IKW/TR performance in HVAC plant room, stand-alone controllers are becoming obsolete.
Interoperable systems have become the industry’s norm and same is being looked at HVAC plant room encompassing the chillers, pumps, cooling tower fans and other ancillaries.
What is your outlook for the industry?
HVAC industry will continue to show growth in the future with the rising construction of residential as well as commercial buildings. As applications in HVAC industry contribute significantly to energy consumption and global warming, this industry will play a significant role in achieving the UN sustainability goals for energy and climate change, by developing innovative, energy efficient and intelligent solutions.
