Site report Indoor swimming pool Fischerinsel

Photo: Elke A. Jung-Wolff
Site report
Indoor swimming pool Fischerinsel
The superlative of better:
with permanent magnet motor
Berliner Bäder Betriebe (BBB) [Berlin pools operations] stand for
several superlatives at once. They are the largest pool operator in
Europe, and also have the largest swimming centre on the continent
in their portfolio, with the swimming and diving pool in Europasportpark. Overall, BBB operate more than 60 indoor swimming
pools, beach and summer pools in the capital city. To operate these
pools, around 8,500 pumps are being used, including 500 for water
treatment. The majority of these pumps are products of the Herborner
Pumpentechnik.
Photo: Elke A. Jung-Wolff
Wolfram Kaube, Head of the Construction and Technology department of BBB, has always had good experiences with the pumps
from Herborn. “They have a long service life, are reliable and lowmaintenance”, says the swimming pool expert known even beyond
the boundaries of Berlin. Due to his satisfaction with the UNIBAD
pumps used until now, Kaube initially showed little interest, when
his contact person at the Herborner Pumpentechnik, Gerd Gomoll,
introduced a coated pool water circulation pump in spring 2014,
with the new series herborner.X. This new generation of pumps has
new pump hydraulics, which have a significantly higher level of efficiency, due to the coating and the extremely smooth accompanying
surfaces. In connection with a permanent magnet motor, the energy
saving is also increased for the operator. “Many parameters are only
achieved on the test benches of the pump manufacturers, but not
in real operation”, says Kaube in justification of his reticence at the
time. Convinced of their product, Herborner Pumpentechnik offered
BBB a field test.
The results
After just a month’s service life it was clear: Gerd Gomoll had not
promised too much. The now – frequency converter optimised – old
UNIBAD only needed 7.7 kW electricity instead of the previous 10
kW, for the same circulation performance at the operating point.
The herborner.X-PM only needed 6.7 kW. The advantage of the
herborner.X-PM is therefore exactly 0.97 kW at the selected operating point. At full power and an electricity price of 17 Cents/kWh
this means a cost saving of EUR 1,445 per year!
Due to the positive test result, it was decided to purchase the
pump. The future circulation will be exclusively carried out by the
new, more efficient herborner.X-PM, and the second pump will
only be switched on for filter cleaning. The conversion and pur-
The site
For a realistic comparison test, a system with two redundant
pumps was required. They chose the indoor swimming pool at
Fischerinsel in Berlin-Mitte. Until then, two Herborn UNIBAD
15/125X3-W2 with IE1 motor pumps had been running alternately
in 24 hour operation. Although the two 18 year old pumps still
functioned perfectly, the Herborner Pumpentechnik replaced one
of the two UNIBAD pumps with a new herborner.X with permanent magnet motor. To produce a comparison between the old
and new series, the old UNIBAD was also located upstream with a
frequency converter.
Both pumps were set exactly at an operating point of 150 m³/h using the frequency converter. To record the run time of the pumps
exactly, operating hour counters were installed. In this way, all the
requirements were created for a direct comparison of the two generations of pumps from the Herborner Pumpentechnik.
chase costs for the herborner.X-PM will be amortized by BBB within
five to six years. “In the case of a pump breakdown, the amortisation time is even shorter (approx. 2 years), as in this case one must
not include the incurred purchase cost in the equation”, explains
Gerd Gomoll.
BBB are convinced: “Due to the significant saving potential, wherever
a pump breakdown occurs in our pools, we will change to the new
technology”, says Wolfram Kaube. Who knows: perhaps there will be
a further superlative for BBB at the end of this process, namely not
only the largest, but also the most efficient pool operator.
HERBORNER PUMPENTECHNIK GmbH & Co KG
Littau 3–5
35745 Herborn, Germany
Telephone: +49 (0) 27 72 / 933 - 0
Fax: +49 (0) 27 72 / 933 -100
Petersdorfer Str. 5
06188 Landsberg, Germany
Telephone: +49 ( 0 ) 3 46 02 / 282-0
Fax: +49 ( 0 ) 3 46 02 / 282-22
www.herborner-pumpen.de
[email protected]