World Pumps visited Armstrong Fluid Technology's plant in Halesowen, Birmingham, UK and spoke with Paul Tonge, UK Sales Director. Paul talks about Armstrong's integrated packaged solutions that embrace the design envelop philosophy to optimise efficiency at part-load, instead of optimising plant equipment and pumps to operate at full-load conditions.
Even in today's energy conscious environment, much equipment is selected to be most efficient running at full-load. However, in reality much plant rarely operates for any length of time at its full design capability.
Armstrong Fluid Technology looked at the part-load conditions that the plant will operate at most of the time - which generally is between 40 - 60% of full load where the best efficiency is to be had. Armstrong's envelope philosophy is to select equipment that is most efficient at part load where it spends most of its time.
Paul uses the analogy of the car, "Many cars spend more time being driven at well below their maximum speed throughout their life. Many buyers look for cars where they are most fuel efficient and this can be well below half of their top speed. Armstrong wants its heating a cooling solutions for buildings to be most efficient where they operate most - between 40 - 60% of full-load. Our pumps can run up and meet that full design demand, but our pumps will be most efficient where they are used most often"