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Mostly Harmless ?
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Mostly Harmless ?
Simon Bradshaw

If You Could Have One

Superpower, What Would It Be?
Bill Gates

Yelp's Employee Scandal: Why

Companies Need To Offer
Career Coaching As A Wellne
J.T. O'Donnell
Benefit
When cities tell their own worst
stories
Olivia Barrow

Simon Bradshaw
Director of API Product Development & Technology at ITT Goulds Pumps

Bill Gates Just Wrote a Rallying

Cry for Clean Energy. Will it be
Enough?
Daniel Roth

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Mostly Harmless ?
Feb 19, 2016

243 views

30 Likes

4 Comments

The title is of course a reference to my muse de jour, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy. I grew up listening to the BBC radio show of the same name and enjoyed
reading the book, more years ago than I care to admit.
For those of you who have not had the pleasure of reading the book, in summary
it is British absurdist humor at its finest (think Monty Python with a sci-fi
theme). For example in the opening chapter of the book, the Earth is completely
destroyed to make room for a "Hyperspace Bypass".
That leads onto the more serious part of this post (and the question mark at the
end of the title), where I am going to take a very deep dive into a recent pump
requirement we were asked to bid and (attempt) to show how apparently mostly
harmless specification limits can easily result in a pump that is definitely
hazardous to your bottom line profits.
Ok so onto the pump rating and specifications. *We were asked to bid the
following*:
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API 610 compliant pump, style BB2 (radially split 1 or 2 stage) for hot oil
refinery service.
Head 906 ft (276m)
Flow 2892 USGPM (657 m3/h)
NPSHa 26.6 ft (8.1m) with a requirement for a 3.3ft (1m) margin
Nss limit 11,000 (US units) maximum
60 Hz electricity frequency
Because the customer wanted to minimize first cost and keep efficiency high,
their strong preference was for 3560 RPM operation. So a mostly harmless set
of specifications right ? Well no not really.
Firstly if you take the NPSHr and assume an ideal pump selection picked at BEP
and maximum impeller diameter then calculate Nss you get the following:
Nss = 3560 * (2892/2)^0.5 / 23.3^0.75 = 12765 (US units).
So right away the Nss (which is only valid when calculated for maximum impeller
diameter @ BEP), exceeds the limit specified for our ideal pump pick. Now when
this happens one way to reduce NPSHr while also keeping under a Nss limit is to
select a larger pump running back on the HQ curve. This is because NPSHr
reduces at flowrates below BEP, but since Nss is calculated only at BEP for
a maximum diameter impeller, the pump "complies" with the Nss specification.
I've tried to demonstrate this on the graphic below.

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Now because we have a larger pump run back on the HQ curve, in order to stay
within the 80% to 110% of BEP selection window, the pump impeller is also
trimmed significantly. This trimming moves the apparent BEP. However there is
a significant price to pay for doing this.
When you trim an impeller, only the outlet geometry is affected. The inlet to the
impeller is unchanged. Pump designers are concerned with what we call the
"shockless flow". This is the flowrate at which the incoming fluid is best aligned
with the impeller vane at the inlet. Since trimming the impeller does not change
the inlet, consequently trimming does not affect the value of shockless flow. I've
shown this in the graphic below.

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Why does the value of shockless flow matter ? It matters because together with
the impeller eye diameter it determines when the impeller will see the onset of
suction recirculation. As most of you will be aware, suction recirculation results
in significantly higher vibration levels and consequently reduced reliability.
In an API 610 pump with modern hydraulic design we would expect the onset of
suction recirculation at around 60% of the BEP at maximum impeller diameter.
However because we've trimmed the impeller, the apparent BEP has now moved
closer to the onset of suction recirculation, reducing the effective operating
range. I think you can see where this is going....
In our example, the need to meet 11,000 Nss forced operation so far away
from shockless flow that the pump is basically going to be operating in suction
recirculation even at the rated flow. The result will be extremely poor
pump reliability and much higher pump life cycle cost.

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Now I expect some of you might be saying "Ah well that is because ITT Goulds Pumps engineers are **spatially challenged
wombats**. Another pump company would do better."
So just to show you that isn't the case, I've posted the best competitor pump
selection (a second competitor I tried didn't have any possible selection):

As you can see they have exactly the same difficulty, meaning that the source of
the problem is the customer specification. You might then respond with -

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"Ah well my company is smarter than that. It could never happen here"
I'd note at this point that these requirements came from a major oil company
who is viewed by their peers as having significant technical prowess :\
So how could we have salvaged this bad situation ?
One possibility would be to specify a pump running at 1780 RPM. This
resolves the need to operate so far from shockless flow, but at the expense of
lower efficiency and higher first cost.
A better possibility would be to allow up to Nss = 13,000 in line with the
guidance of ITT Goulds Pumps SGsT curve. In doing so we could have made
an optimum selection near BEP and maximum impeller diameter resulting in
a reliable and efficient pump.
Obviously increasing NPSHa would have helped. I didn't mention this in my
original version of this post because the usual customer response is: "your
competitor can meet the specification - stop asking for more NPSH".
However in the interests of completeness I would suggest that if your Nss
and NPSHr targets prevent selection of a hypothetical pump operating close
to BEP and maximum diameter impeller, something is badly wrong.
So the moral of the story is that even mostly harmless specifications can cost
your company dearly. If you find such specifications lurking in your company's
standards, please ask for help. ITT Goulds Pumps has many years of
experience helping customers write common sense specifications that minimize
life cycle cost (LCC) and we can help you too.

As always, comments and questions are gratefully received and most welcome.
Beatus Centrifuga
*Rated values have been slightly altered to spare the embarrassment of any
individual or company*
**ITT Goulds Pumps R&D Engineering is a certified wombat free zone - and we
can read maps and almost never ever need to stop and ask for directions**

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Pumps, Specifications, Nss

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Simon Bradshaw

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Hasan Jafari
Engineer at NISOC
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4 days ago

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Bill Gates

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Co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

If You Could Have One Superpower, What Would It

Be?
Feb 23, 2016

68,324 views

3,241 Likes

707 Comments

Melinda and I were asked that question recently by high school students in
Kentucky. Our answers must have sounded pretty lame to fans of superheroes
like Supergirl and the Flash -- we simply wished for more energy and time to help
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us keep up with all the moving pieces in our busy lives.

But for billions of families around the world, the challenges of energy and time
are very different from ours -- and these challenges have a huge impact on their
ability to realize their potential. Thats why we chose to focus on these critical
issues in our annual letter, which were releasing today.

Energy to Fuel Poverty Reduction

Imagine life without energy. No energy to power a light bulb, mobile phone, or
fridge. In fact, about 1.3 billion people -- 18 percent of the worlds population -dont need to imagine. Thats what life is like for them every day.

If we had to sum up history in one sentence it would be: Life gets better -- not for
everyone all the time, but for most people most of the time. And one of the
biggest reasons is energy. For thousands of years, people burned wood for fuel.
Their lives were, by and large, short and hard. But when people started using coal
in the 1800s, life started getting better a lot faster. Pretty soon we had lights,
skyscrapers, elevators, air conditioning, cars, planes, and all the other things that
make up modern life.
Without access to energy, the poor are stuck in the dark, denied all of the
economic, social, and health benefits that come with power. So if we really want to
help the worlds poorest families, we need to find a way to get them access to
energy they can afford. And we need to do it in a way that doesnt make climate
change worse, because the poor are more vulnerable to extreme weather and
other climate impacts than anyone else.
To produce much more cheap, clean energy, we must make better use of existing
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technologies, such as solar and wind. Even more important, were going to need a
massive amount of research into thousands of new ideas. Today, the U.S.
government is the largest funder of energy R&D, and yet were still woefully
underinvesting. In fact, consumers spend more on gasoline in a week than the
government spends on clean-energy research in a year!
To help trigger a big increase in R&D, I recently helped launch an effort by more
than two dozen private citizens that will complement government research being
done by several countries. Some of the crazier inventions that I'm excited about
are a possible way to use solar energy to produce fuel, much like plants use
sunlight to make food for themselves, and batteries the size of swimming pools
with huge storage capacity.
Few of the crazy ideas will pay off. But were betting that within 15 years, scientists
and engineers will develop big breakthroughs that will put us on a path to zero
carbon emissions and make energy more affordable for everyone.

Save Womens Time, Unleash Their Power

The more than 1 billion people without energy spend a significant portion of their
time collecting wood and water for the basics of life: heating and cleaning their
homes and cooking their food. Almost invariably, that grueling and timeconsuming labor is done by women and girls. Globally, women spend an average
of 4.5 hours doing unpaid work every day, compared to an average of about 2
hours per day for men.
This global average obscures the reality of many womens lives, which can consist
of six or seven or more hours of unpaid work every day. When Melinda visited
Tanzania a couple of years ago, she stayed with Anna and Sanare and their six
children. Annas day started at 5 a.m., when she lit the fire for making breakfast.
After they cleaned up, they fetched water. Then it was time to build the fire again
for lunch. After that they went into the forest to chop wood. Then they went for
more water, milked the goats, made dinner, and washed up in the moonlight.
Annas exhausting day is typical in many parts of the world.

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This heavy and unequal burden is unfair. Its also a serious obstacle to progress,
because women are so busy meeting basic needs that they cant invest in the
future by doing paid work, going to school, or visiting the doctor regularly.
One solution is to invest in cheap, clean energy so that unpaid work doesnt take
so many hours. But reducing the time required to do household tasks isnt
enough. No matter how efficient we make housework, we wont free up womens
time until we all recognize that their time is just as valuable as mens. Theres not
a single country in the world where men do as much unpaid work as women, so
everyone has plenty of room for improvement on this score.
The division of work depends on cultural norms, and we call them norms because
they seem normal -- so normal that many of us dont notice the assumptions
were making about how women and men are supposed to spend their time.
Wed love to play a role in inspiring young people to help shift those norms.
Energy and time are important issues, but there are many others. What can you
do to improve the world? What superpower do you wish you had? Join the
discussion by sharing your #superpowerforgood and read our 2016 Annual Letter
at www.gatesletter.com.

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This article originally appeared on CNN.com.

Gender Equality, Energy, Climate Change

Featured In Social Impact, Oil & Energy, Green Business, Editor's Picks
Written by

Bill Gates

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David Malungane
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14 hours ago

Ralph Seabrooks , Seth Appiah-Mensah, odri seva, +2

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Linda Huijing Gao, Farzana Gohar, odri seva, +2

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J.T. O'Donnell

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Yelp's Employee Scandal: Why Companies Need To

Offer Career Coaching As A Wellness Benefit
Feb 23, 2016

33,247 views

457 Likes

134 Comments

If you haven't seen it yet, Yelp's CEO is in the middle of a PR situation. A

disgruntled employee wrote him an open letter on the popular blogging platform,
Medium, outlining why terrible wages and the high cost of living in San Francisco
was leaving her starving, stressed, and ruining her childhood dreams.
The young woman is receiving a lot of criticism for doing this, including a scathing
rebuttle from a fellow Millennial worker who has dealt with the same adversity in
a much different way.
However, the real lesson business leaders can learn here is the entire thing could
have been avoided if Yelp was offering its young staff private career coaching.
A College Degree Doesn't Provide Professional Maturity
Millennials make up 50% of the workforce today. That number will jump to 75%
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in the next 10-15 years. While well-educated, studies show they are lacking the
professional skills employers are looking for. Less than 30% of them have ever
done internships or been in professional settings before. Which means, those first
few jobs out of college come with steep learning curves, both professionally and
personally. Having an objective person to talk through the challenges helps
Millennials move through the learning curves faster and more effectively.
Gallup Study Reveals Disturbing Millennial Trend...
Gallup researched Millennial college grads who were extremely happy and
engaged in their early careers, resulting in a higher level of success compared to
their peers. The study showed those who thrived had had six major emotional
and experiential opportunities prior to starting their careers. These included:
1. Professors who made you excited about learning.
2. Professors who cared about you as a person.
3. A mentor who sat and thought about your future with you.
4. Extremely involved in extracurricular activities.
5. Had a project that took more than a semester or more to complete.
6. Had an internship or job where the student could apply what they were
learning in the classroom.
Shockingly, a mere 3% of Millennial college grads have experienced all six. In
other words, 97% of the Millennial workforce hasn't had the critical experiences
needed to improve their chances of professional success and satisfaction. Leaving
employers to either help them close the gap, or deal with the consequences.
Millennials Want (And Need) Private Coaching To 'Save Face'
Some companies think teaching their managers to be better at coaching will solve
the problem. It won't. Managers are not coaches. An employee reports to the
manager. No matter how good a manager might be at training or motivating an
employee, they can never be fully objective to the needs of the employee's
development. That's why private coaching must be offered. It's the only way the
employee can work through the challenges without being judged by the manager.
This is particularly important to Millennial workers who hate letting people down.
Raised on praise and rewards, one of the hardest things for them to deal with in
the workplace is failure and disappointment. Thus, they will often avoid
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conversations with managers because they are afraid of conflict. Having an

unbiased third-party to get assistance from lets Millennials quickly get the right
kind of coaching to work through issues and stay engaged in the job.
Millennials Assume Private Coaching Will Be Provided
Millennials don't just want their own career coach, they expect it. Why? They're
the first generation to be coached their entire lives. From organized sports to
music lessons, Millennials learned early on that coaching isn't a sign of weakness,
but a path to greatness.
For Yelp and other large companies hiring massive amounts of Millennials, I
strongly encourage you to at least explore affordable virtual career health and
wellness platforms for your staff as a benefit option. The ROI on the investment
will come in reduced turnover, higher productivity, greater job satisfaction, and
definitely less PR disasters.

Yelp, Coaching, Millennials

Featured In Human Resources, Editor's Picks, Careers: The Next Level, Careers: Getting
Started
Written by

J.T. O'Donnell

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