Podcast

We Do More: Industrial Pumping Solutions in NOV – Part 1

With guest Ian Horton

Sep 17, 2018

Would you be surprised to know that NOV sells products into markets outside of oil and gas? Join us as we discuss our progressing cavity pump technologies in various industrial markets.

We not only own the majority of the original licensees, but we were there at the beginning. We've been around for 90 years.

Ian Horton

VP of Industrial Markets

Podcast Host

Michael Gaines

The Voice

Michael Gaines is the host of NOV’s podcast, NOV Today, for which he researches topics of interest, conducts interviews, and develops content for internal and external distribution. In addition, he leads the team responsible for overall content creation and content strategy at the corporate level. Prior to this, Michael held several roles at NOV, including director of communications within the corporate marketing group, global product line manager for inclination tools, and product champion for roller-cone drill bits. He received his bachelor of science in marketing from LeTourneau University and MBA from Amberton University. Michael is also a graduate of the NOV Ventures—Technology Commercialization program with The University of Texas at Austin.

We Do More: Industrial Pumping Solutions in NOV – Part 1 Transcript

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00:10 Michael Gaines: Hello, and welcome to NOV Today. I'm your host, Michael Gaines. NOV is known around the world for their industry leading solutions in the oil and gas arena. But would you be surprised to know that NOV also has leading brands in the industrial space? In this episode, we dive into the area of industrial pumping solutions. One of NOV's experts in this area is Ian Horton, the director of global applications within the process and flow technologies business unit. One of Ian's passions is around progressive cavity pumps or more commonly PC pumps. He shared that NOV has had a long history in the space of industrial technology, whose origins started out as a surprise to everyone.

00:54 Michael Gaines: So the history of the pumps, progressive cavity pumps, PC pumps. I've heard certain statements around the area of; we're kind of the grandfather of this space, so to speak. You don't look like a grandfather, so I assume it's even before you. Can you talk, Ian, a little bit about NOV's history in that space?

01:19 Ian Horton: Well, thanks for that.

01:20 Michael Gaines: Yeah. [chuckle]

01:21 Ian Horton: Yeah, the PC technology really came about by accident. The inventors at the time were trying to create something else, some kind of super chargers that would compress fuel and air mixture and by default they created this technology that at the time was known as the helical gear pump, which later on became known as the progressing cavity or PC pump. The creators, if you like, by the 1930s, issued four licensees to four separate companies, one being Moyno for the USA, Mono for the UK, and two other companies in Europe, Gardier and PCM. So as time moved forward, the Moyno organization acquired one of the other licensees, Gardier. And then fast forward some further time, Mono as we said earlier became part of the NOV family and later on so did Moyno. So that combined really illustrates that we not only of the majority of the original licensees, but we were there at the beginning, we've been around for 90 years. We truly are the great grandfather, I guess.

02:28 Michael Gaines: Yeah. [chuckle]

02:30 Michael Gaines: Taking the PC pump technology further along, Mr. Dib Dib, NOV's vice president of industrial markets, share that the offerings available today are a result of the combination of some of the world's leading legacy brands.

02:43 Mr. Dib Dib: In 2004, National Oilwell acquired the company called Mono in Manchester, that manufacture progressive cavity pump, and this was the first product line that is related to the industrial business. And then in 2013, we, NOV, acquired the company called RNM, that had another range of progressive cavity pump called Moyno. So what we have done, we have combined the two product line into one product offering that is servicing big range of non-oil and gas market.

03:21 Michael Gaines: PC pumps have been developed and modified to meet the needs of a wide variety of industries. Ian shared that there are many benefits to using an NOV PC pump versus other types of technologies.

03:33 Ian Horton: Okay. There's a wide range of applications in industries from waste water to water, clean water, food and beverage, chemical, pharmaceutical, explosives, and of course, oil as well. And one of the benefits of using a PC pump versus other pumps is it's gentle motion of action, so it's minimized in its shear of products. So, where a product is shear sensitive, it is very useful. For example, sewage sludge, mixed chemicals and even live fish can be pumped. I think generally in the pump world, everybody, when you say the word pump jumps to think about centrifugal pumps. That's everybody's first choice. And it's a good point because I think when there's a need for a pump in a particular application, the engineer or the user involved will try in a lot of cases, if he's not aware of other technologies, to process that application with a centrifugal pump. And obviously, by its nature and they're obviously good in their own application envelope, but there's certain things as I mentioned before that I think really a PC pump is good at in terms of low flows, in terms of pressures, in terms of minimizing shear as I said earlier as well. So that's unique and specialized that not a general pump technology can do.

05:01 Michael Gaines: When looking ahead, Dib Dib shared some insights into future developments from the industrial markets group.

05:07 Mr. Dib Dib: Yeah, a good question but at the same time, maybe we cannot share everything here, what we are doing in the new product development.

[chuckle]

05:11 Michael Gaines: Yeah, sure. Sure, sure.

05:14 Mr. Dib Dib: But of course, we're looking at new technologies that will first make this pump more affordable using different material, and even coping with difficult operations or fluid, and even from manufacturability perspective, also how we can make it cost effective.

05:37 Michael Gaines: Ensuring that solutions for customers are indeed cost effective and easy to maintain, is on the top of the mind of most customers. According to Jeff Houston, an experienced manufacturers representative for environmental improvements. Jeff shared that it's innovative approaches like NOV's patented easy strip design that has helped propel the innovation within the pumping industry forward, ultimately meeting the needs of customers.

06:03 Jeff Houston: Well, the easy strip design have gone through a couple of variations of it, but the easy strip design is when I go and sell a product, an old PC pump or an old progressive cavity pump, if you needed to de-rag a pump, clean it, maintain it, do anything, you had to disconnect it from the hard piping, pull it out and then disassemble the pump and clean it, and then put it back together and go and connect it back again. That took forever. That's a two-day job versus now, a half-day job or one-day job. Now, you can remove the cap, where the rotor and stator housing and de-rag it while it's still sitting in its hard piping. So you've cut maintenance and downtime in operation, you've cut maintenance down quite significantly.

06:55 Jeff Houston: When I go in there and I show that video or I show a little hand-held tool or model to an operator, their eyes light up, because, as we know, with any rotating equipment, they're always just maintenance and when you've just cut that maintenance down to a half a day versus a day, now you can go and do other things. That makes their eyes light up. And that's what I want.

07:19 Michael Gaines: Thanks for listening to this episode of NOV Today. For more information on NOV pumps or to learn how Dib, Ian, and the rest of the industrial markets group can help you solve your mixing challenges, head over to nov.com/podcast and check out the podcast notes. In the next industrial markets episode, we look at the mixing space and how industrial companies across the board are benefiting from NOV's investment in these technologies. For NOV Today, I'm Michael Gaines. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you later.

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