Shush Money: How Hydronauten's Silent Pumps Save Millions in Energy Costs

Johannes: Yeah. But Paul was there at the beginning, and he was the whole time involved in the development.

Ruth: Nice. So, you won the Advanced Electronics Challenge. Congratulations. We've already had the other participants also on the show, so I will link the other episode in the show notes for our listeners to listen to enjoy the whole series.

Could you explain now what your winning solution does and what problems it addresses?

Paul: What our system basically does is like your noise cancelling headphones, reduce noises, and by that also vibrations inside, pumping systems or especially, on pumps and, connected piping systems. What maybe sounds.

Like a first world problem or the pub sold out is, in large industry applications quite a problem. Because many pumps, especially those in wastewater treatment, are quite large and powerful and they produce not only, Noise, but they all, also produce a lot of vibrations. And when those vibrations are not controlled correctly or, kept under a certain level They will damage the whole surrounding system. So, the pipes, the pumps itself, and the surrounding buildings. And if those pumps are, close to, residential buildings, they will annoy the residents, of course. By applying the active noise cancelling. So, introducing additional noise to counteract the noise from the pumps, you can eliminate most of that vibration and thereby.

For one, reduce the impact on all surrounding infrastructure. And this was the main goal when we started to reduce vibrations and noise. And the advantage that Yeah. Introduced itself by reducing the noise and vibration was that you. Actually, cannot control many pumps because of that noise and vibration and speed.

So many pumps are set to a certain speed or to a certain power level to reduce vibrations not to work at a certain point of operation that will introduce a lot of noise and the way those pumps are running quite inefficiently. And this is. Just normal. So, it's what you do basically. But as you said, pumps do consume a lot of energy all around the world.

We cannot live without pumps from the morning toilet up to hygiene hospitals. Everybody uses pumps industry. Of course, this is a lot of impact in terms of energy consumption and. When you hear that those pumps are running not very efficient, this is a big problem. And we can, by reducing the noise and vibration, also control the pumps in a very efficient manner.

Because we do not have to counteract or we have not, look for problems and vibrations or certain speech regimes where the pumps will destroy themselves. This gives us a whole new opportunity to, control and run those pumps.

Johannes: Yeah. And the main topic is that we help our customers to improve the operational safety on one side, that is the vibration problem and the whole noise problems.

And on the other side, we reduce the energy consumption.

Paul: And the

Johannes: energy to reduce the energy consumption, it is necessary to reduce these pressure positions, and the technology, we called it the quiet hydro technology, is the enabler for this controlling method.

Ruth: So, in simple terms, and of course, without telling us your secret, but how does your technology work? How do you make pumps quieter? You.

Paul: Imagine like a noise cancelling headphone. There's a speaker. for one that is introduced into the pipework. So, it's actually connecting with the fluid, for example. Like an underwater speaker, and we sense the noises from the pump with a sensor or with a pressure transducer and calculate. In real time, basically a cancelling signal or a counteracting signal that is then played back by the loudspeaker that is overlapping with the sound of the pump. And by destructive interference, they cancel each other out.

This is a, basically the same principle, like in your noise cancelling headphones. Okay. Sounds easy. Yeah, basically it's, totally easy. It's an old technique. The first papers you will find, on that topic are quite old. They're from the. With, 20th century. Wow. And yeah, the basic concept is quite old.

But doing this in hydraulics or in, in a water pumping system, for example, is not as easy as your noise cancelling headphones because the range and the speed of sound and water, for example, or in fluids, is quite a lot higher than in air, for example. And this makes it. Quite hard to do and to calculate those cancelling signals.

And for that we need quite a strong signal processing. And this is basically, what introduced us to the Advanced Electronics Challenge. We started with self-built, self-taught signal processing systems and, noise cancelling algorithms. And in cooperation with that, with the challenge, and we have also to say with our electrical engineer here at our company, he brought ours signal analysis system to a whole new level with those components. And this is now for one much stronger and for the other hand a much more efficient end and smaller Than it was before. So basically, the brains of our system, what was, part of the, it was electronics challenge at what brought us here.

Ruth: Cool. And you mentioned sensors and data. Can you share some insights into how AI specifically comes into play or what data you are collecting and analysing?

Paul: So, this is maybe quite a sensitive topic. I will try to steer my myself around some, pitfalls. So, for one, the main algorithm that is playing the noise cancelling basically is a very.

Simple ai, you could say if you cut an AI to its complete basics, you can use that for noise cancelling actually. But this is not, what, what gives us the opportunity or the ability to reduce the energy consumption. What we do with that is we collect a lot of process data about our noise cancelling.

With that data, we can see how efficient the pump is running, basically. So, by using the sensor data and by using the noise cancelling data, we can quite precisely here. You should say the best efficiency point of the pump, and also how the whole system is running. So, if there's maybe damage to, the bearings or if the pump is running at a good operation point or not, we can hear or see that.

And we trained in actual AI or neural network to learn the. Pump operation and to optimize it. And by that we saw that we can save up to 20, 30% of energy consumption of some systems. Okay. So there, there are basically two intelligent systems for the noise cancelling. For the other one, the optimization algorithm that is collecting data from the noise cancelling and optimizing the pump speed.

Ruth: So, your solution also works with existing pumps, but also with new installations?

Paul: Yeah, totally. Okay. So, you can introduce our system into existing systems. We usually need about a meter or of 50 centimetres of, space inside, the pipeline at the discharge line of the pump. Usually there's enough space for that.

Our system is much smaller than any passive system that is capable of reducing those levels of noise reduction that we are able to, for us, it's also much easier to build a new system for an existing pump. Because we can measure how loud that pump currently is in the current system and we can fine tune our quiet hydro system to that.

But we can also, build those systems for new installations because then you can plan the small part of the pipe for system and it's easier for us to install it. So, it's just plug and play. Basically the, all the sensors and all the installation is done by us or by people of our company.

We are tuning the system after that maybe for, a few hours and then it's up and running and doing its job basically for its own. Yeah, it's completely all talk.

Ruth: You mentioned that you're optimizing the pumps itself and that you're also protecting them or keeping them safe from, breakage due to the vibrations and energy savings.

Are there any other benefits your customers are experiencing? I.

Johannes: The great electronic consumption of the pumps makes the pumps able for stabilization of the electronic power grid.

Paul: Oh.

Johannes: So, if you produce more electronic power than you use in the electronic grid, then you get a problem. Or if you produce less electronic power than you use, then you get a problem and both sides you have to control.

Directly the balance between the producer and the consumption.

And you can use pumps for that. And that was the starting project. It's called the smart grid. Controlling. Yeah. So, if you have. More electronic power in the grid. In the electronic grid, then you can rise up the pump speed a little bit.

Or you can slow down the pumps a little bit.

And we can see how. Exactly. The balance on the electronic grid is about the 50 hertz that we have in our electronic grid. And for example, one month ago or so, we had this problem in Spain, in Portugal. There was a problem between the consumption and the production of the electronic power, and therefore you can use pumps because you have so many pumps in the electronic grid for this stabilization, it's another USP of our technology.

Yeah.

Ruth: Yeah. I was just going to say, this sounds like an. Oddly familiar problem, that went through the news a couple of weeks ago when, yeah. Spain, Portugal, and I think a part of Southern France is complete grid shut down. So, you say this could have been easily prevented by pumps?

Johannes: Yeah.

Ruth: Okay.

Johannes: That was the conclusion of the research from the university where we met. Paul and me. And yeah, there we started, but on at this time, there was no big problem in the grid because there are many big power plants in the grid. But we stop all these power plants. And we have more and more renewable energy producers with the wind turbines and, the whole Solar panels. And so, there is a big fluctuation in the power grid and this. Fluctuation, we can stabilize by pumps, for example. And yeah, in the future we want to do this with big pumps and with small pumps.

Ruth: Incredible. yeah. Have all the European governments knocked on your door yet, or?

Johannes: I think at the moment.

We are not known from them. Yeah. Okay. So, we have to make some more marketing and

Ruth: yeah, let's see if we can change that.

Johannes: Yeah,

Ruth: So, you say this, this problem, and just maybe because not every one of our listeners is familiar with, how the energy system and the smart grid works, you say the adoption of renewable energy causes. Grids to become a little bit more unstable because there are high peaks of high production of power and then, but then there's not enough consumers that take the power out of the grid again.

So, it kind of peaks and then collapses or how Is that correct? Yeah.

Johannes: Yeah, that's correct. Okay. Because you have to make sure that you have 50 hertz in the grid and if you have more energy in the grid, then the frequency goes up. And if you have, more consumption, then the frequency goes down.

And. Every step leads to a not stable process in the electronic grid. And that is the problem. That is the major problem in the electronic grid because we have not enough batteries, and we have not enough capacity to compensate it. Yeah,

Ruth: interesting. Probably a provocative question. Why is that because we are probably just not there yet or is that something that just didn't come to mind.

Johannes: I think it's probably not yet. It's not there yet. Hydrolytic power plants, for example, those have a lot of capacity to save potential energy. Okay. So, if you pump a lot of, water up the hill, you store a lot of potential energy that you can use later if you need a lot of energy.

Paul: And this is in, quotation marks quite easy because it's just water on a higher level. Of course you need the infrastructure for it, but the, controlling process is not complicated by, the concept. Introducing, smart systems like bigger, consumers. For example, cooling warehouses use a lot of energy and those have sometimes, contracts with the electricity.

Producers for short moment, shut down their cooling processes. Because this will not have a big impact on their, warehouses, for example. But it'll buffer some of the demand in the energy grid and thereby it can dampen the effect of the rising and falling. Okay. frequency liquid.

And by introducing pumps to that system, there's a lot of potential to manage that grid frequency, but it is not known that you can do it. And also, and this is maybe the loop back to our noise cancelling. When you control the speed of the pump, very. Roughly or very fast to stabilize the grid. You will introduce a lot more pressure positions than you had before.

Maybe you, will encounter speeds where you get resonances with the pipe work and with our noise cancelling, you are actually now able to use pumps for grid stabilization.

You need the one technology to use the other.

Ruth: Are you still in a startup phase or can you already share a specific customer success story that maybe demonstrates the real-world impact of your solution?

Johannes: That is the wastewater pumping station.

On the Baltic Sea here in, it's a city in the north of Germany, and there is a pumping station where you have vibrations in the hood surrounding of the pumping station. These vibrations. Causes vibrations in the living rooms of the people in the buildings around.

And so, they don't control their pump. Very efficient and they have big problems with the pipe work. And there we installed two of our systems. There are five pumps, and two pumps are running all the time. And we installed two systems and. Two and a half years ago. And since that, they have no more problems, and they are totally happy now.

And there we installed the quiet hydro control unit for the pumps.

And we will see in a half year we have, better, better data grounding to know. How many energy consumption we can save there.

But at the moment, it seems that there are 20, 25%. They are saving wow energy and that is the field that is not, only experimental or so on.

That is the field on the outside. Yeah. Terrific. And they are very happy.

Ruth: Yeah. Thinking about my living room shaking every time someone

Johannes: that's not, nice. Yeah. But you need these pumps and the pumping stations mostly in the middle of the city because the wastewater. Goes down there in the city, so you are not able to move this pumping station to another location where the vibrations don't affect anyone, or that would make me even the surrounding more

Ruth: unhappy as a person who lives there, Yeah, definitely.

Paul: I have to, think about not only the pumping station itself, but also the, connected pipework of, course, because all the sewers are, connecting to a collection. The pool. Basically, where the pumps are pumping the wastewater to the next wastewater treatment plant and also those discharge lines go through the city to the next treatment plant.

And you also had to, dig up those pipes and lay them anywhere else. It's not that easy.

Ruth: Yeah. I imagine coming back to the advanced Electronics Challenge, what was the most valuable feedback for you or insight you gained during the competition process?

Paul: For one, it was how I. Yeah, how compact and how small you could do those, signal conditioning and signal processing.

Because before we had large modules to do the signal processing, it was quite complicated. It was a lot of work to change anything basically. So, we rested on one solution that just worked and but were not able to iterate on it. And with. Yeah, integrated circuits and stuff like that. We are now able to much finer control those processes and integrate those much smaller and more compact in our system.

And that also makes it easier to build those closer to our actual hardware systems before we had to Yeah, do it all in in, big enclosures. With a lot of energy.

Johannes: Normally we have a big cabinet at the moment, but now we can reduce this whole electronic hardware to a smaller one on one side. it's great for our product and with these modules from.

From the challenge we have now a way to do this and to make it, to a real product, to a real case of products, smaller and bigger systems. That is the biggest benefit of the challenge.

Ruth: Were there any particular challenges or pivotal moments that pushed you to innovate even further?

Paul: Yeah, basically the way we can now program our algorithms.

Is enabling us to do much more iterations, to be much faster with our iterations and thereby to develop much, much better and much more effective solutions. For example, the additional signal processing needed for our AI system that is doing the pump optimization that had to be complicated system stacked on top of it, and now we can integrate it, much more easily and iterate on that.

This makes us much faster in development.

Ruth: Is there anything I have forgotten to ask you that you wish I had asked you?

Johannes: We have a possibility to make a predictive maintenance or condition monitoring on our system for the customers with new circuits from, Avnet. We are able to do this in, our own cloud or leading system at our customers.

And that makes it able to see many faults and many problems in Yeah. Every pumping station before it comes to a catastrophic.

Paul: Okay. this is a big, one big part of the AI understanding of the pumping system. We can see when something is changing and what is changing and. By knowing how and what is changing, we can also say, okay, maybe it's a bearing.

There's a problem in the discharge line, for example, or there's blockage or something. We cannot only see it, but we can of course, tell the customer or the system tells the customer itself by, in terms of IoT or, any system like, like that either. Directly connected to their POC or through our cloud.

Ruth: Great. Thank you for mentioning that. That is very important. Yeah. If you had to put together a soundtrack for this episode, what song would you put on it?

Johannes: We have found a soundtrack. It's called: The Pump Action.

Paul: I know a version of the Observer. The group is called.

Ruth: That concludes our conversation with Johannes and Paul from Hydronauten.

Thank you for sharing your insights today. Your innovative approach to pump efficiency optimization demonstrates exactly why we created this podcast. To highlight how IoT and smart technologies and data can address critical challenges while delivering tangible business benefits. So, thank you for listening to We Talk IoT. Until next time, stay curious and keep innovating.