Carbon Trust backs energy-efficient pumping technology

Suffolk, UK-based Amarinth received a boost from the Carbon Trust to develop what it expects to be a more cost-efficient and rapid process to manufacture impellers, which are used in industrial pumping applications.

The project is focused on ensuring the devices have higher energy efficiencies and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. An impeller is a rotating component of a centrifugal pump that helps to increase the pressure and flow of fluids.

Amarinth—which manufactures centrifugal pumps and other equipment for the industrial, chemical and petrochemical industries—said the more than £160,000 ($265,000) grant is expected to allow the company to complete the project by June 2011. The Carbon Trust is an independent company set up and funded by the UK government to help accelerate commercialization of low carbon technologies.

Amarinth says optimized impellers have the potential to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent to 25 percent compared to other pumps as well as reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Amarinth thinks the project could reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions in its target market by 17,000 tons by 2020 and 110,000 tons by 2050.

The Carbon Trust has invested in numerous other cleantech-related technologies, including a £20 million prize offered earlier this year, in conjunction with five wind energy developers, to encourage engineers across the globe to help commercialize sturdier and cheaper foundations for offshore wind farms (see Carbon Trust in £20M hunt for offshore turbine foundations).

In May, the Carbon Trust signed a £10 million deal with Sichuan, China-based China Energy Conservation Investment to ease the transition of British clean technologies into the Chinese market (see Carbon Trust launches cleantech exchange with China).