Case

Improving the MTBF from weeks to years in Bangladesh

Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dutch drinking water companies do special projects worldwide to improve the drinking water installations of countries in need of technical support.

For one of their projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we provided a specialist in both pumps and frequency inverters.

In Dhaka, a borehole pump’s average lifespan was 3 to 12 weeks before the drinking water company had to exchange it for a new pump. As a result, there was not always enough available drinking water for all of its 16 million citizens.

Assignment

Improve the lifetime of the pumps and teach the mechanics how to make a proper installation.

Defect boreholepumps at the local repair shop – © Oveducon

Execution

We started off by talking to a lot of the people who were involved, in order to gather more information about their current situation.

We discovered that the people who select the pumps, blamed the quality of the pump. In their opinion this was because of the brand and they were thinking about switching to more expensive pumps.

With the mechanics we found out that they did their job the best they could, but that in some cases they didn’t have the right tools.

“A borehole pump’s average lifespan was 3 to 12 weeks…”

In the local pump repair shop of the drinking water company, they showed us that most borehole pumps failed due to a problem with the motor. Many motors were burned but they couldn’t tell us the cause of that.

Defect boreholepumps at the local repair shop – © Oveducon

Cable connection – © Oveducon

Another thing we learned was that a borehole had a very short lifespan. The capacity of a borehole decreased tremendously within a year. Although, normally, a borehole can have a lifespan of about thirty years without decreasing in capacity.

Nearly every pump we came across was driven by a frequency inverter. But there was something strange with the frequency inverters, because nearly all of them were configured on their maximum frequency. Also, the temperature in the frequency cabinet was very high, more than 50 degrees Celsius, causing a lot of thermal issues with the inverters.

Mechanics removing a defect borehole pump – © Oveducon

Based on the information we gathered, we discovered a wide range of areas that could use improvements, but after close examination we decided to focus on two areas which would enable them to make the most impact.

We organized a course in which they learned how to make a watertight cable connection with the proper tools to avoid burned motors and also showed them how they could lower the ambient temperature in the frequency inverter cabinet.

Results

First of all, the mechanics were trained to make a watertight cable connection, which worked out very well. In the following months, the mechanics lowered six new pumps and all six of them were still in operation by the time we came back after five months, which is a great result. Previously, these pumps would have broken down within three to twelve weeks.