Big Motors to Make Big Difference to Public Health
03/12/2012 Rotor (UK) Limited / Regal Beloit UK
Regal is supplying seven enormous motors for a new wastewater pumping station being built in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city. Egypt has a massive programme of renewing its water and wastewater infrastructure, to meet the developing needs of its rapidly growing, urbanising and industrialising population. This started all the way back in 1990 and by 2005 the vast majority of communities had access to improved water supplies.The focus then turned to wastewater and sewerage. Currently, about one third of the population is connected to sanitary sewers, so problems of disease and child mortality remain, but work to address this is continuing apace.
Alexandria has seen its resident population more than double to 4.1 million, and continues to grow. And because it is a centre for shipping, trade (serving approximately 80% of Egypt's imports and exports) and tourism, the actual number of people is far higher than this. It is also an important industrial centre and hosts major natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez, again increasing the transient population.
The motors are being supplied in two stages, the first was despatched in mid-2012 the second will go in the last months of the year. They are high voltage 800 frame units from Regal's HAA range. This is a 'standard' line of motors, but they are designed so that they can be easily customised to meet the specific requirements of a given project.
They are based on a fabricated steel frame with standard sizes stopping at 630, although it is not unusual for motors up to 1000 frame to be built. Similarly, they are normally 2-12 pole configurations, but for Alexandria a 14 pole design was used.
"Normally HAAs are conventional horizontal shaft motors," says Mark Williams of Regal. "The most obvious customisation for this Egypt project is that they are mounted vertically, with the shaft facing downwards and the pump impeller mounted directly to them.
"This led to quite a few mechanical modifications; to bearings, mountings etc. but because of the HAA's flexible design these were all fairly easy to accommodate."
The motors will be running at a relatively low speed and often for extended periods of time. This is an issue because direct forced draught cooling is unlikely to prove adequate in such a hot climate.
"We have several options for cooling, plus plenty of expertise in hot environment installations," says Mark. "We considered air blowers, water jackets and several other ideas, finally going with a driven air solution that should prove robust and easy to maintain".
When the installation is complete, the pumping station will be integrated into the city-wide wastewater network, which when complete in the near future will serve the whole community and have capacity for significant growth to match the increasing population. This will be probably the greatest single contribution to Alexandria's public health programme.
For further information, please contact Lucie Hodkova:
Regal UK/ Rotor (UK) Limited Unit 8, 16 Everitt Close, Denington Industrial Estate, Wellingborough, NN8 2QF Tel: +44 (0)1933 230900 Fax: +44(0)1933 220069 Email: lucie.hodkova@rotor.co.uk Web: www.rotor.co.uk
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