INESC P&D Brasil and HIGRA partnership for the development of a monitoring system for amphibious pumps and generators
The pumping of liquids, namely drinking water, is an activity that often goes unnoticed in everyday life, despite being crucial to modern society.
16th March 2021
Through this process, drinking water reaches homes and workplaces, hospitals and businesses. At the same time, when it comes to ecological generation of energy, the importance of hydrogeneration is quite significant, since it transforms hydropower into electric power. The pumps and amphibious generators manufactured by HIGRA are the foundations for both pumping and generation technologies developed within the scope of this project.
In February, INESC P&D Brasil and HIGRA, a global reference in amphibious turbo generators and pumps, aerators and mixers, established a partnership that aims to increase the efficiency and reliability of pumping and hydrogenation processes.
Due to the underwater installation process, the amphibious motors and generators present several operational particularities, which require the use of sophisticated instrumentation techniques for their correct monitoring and diagnosis. In this sense, the collaboration between HIGRA and INESC P&D Brasil aims to develop diagnostic techniques and tools that support the operators, namely by obtaining real-time knowledge about their operating conditions.
According to INESC P&D Brasil researcher Douglas Riffel, "by having access to data collected from the system developed during this research endeavour, the operators of amphibious pumps or generators will be able to foresee situations requiring attention - and, if necessary, schedule an intervention on a date that causes less disruption to the generation process, thus avoiding untimely stoppages of the power plant".
Elyson Carvalho and Douglas Riffel, lecturers at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS) - an entity associated with INESC P&D Brasil - are in charge of leading this partnership.
Photo: HYGRA