Saving energy and sustainable development with water hydraulics components and systems- opportunities, challenges and objectives

Abstract

This paper describes the actual research activities related to development of water hydraulic components and systems. The main focus areas are discussed and the challenges and possible solutions of each subject are analyzed. Water quality aspects, component technology, control aspects and also applications are covered. Also some analysis about water hydraulics' possible role in climate change process and energy saving are presented. Trends confirm that design of water hydraulic application is a natural approach to solve many of the major environmental pollution problem and problems in industries, which cannot accept contamination of products and problems of fire and explosion risk. The paper presents a research on trends in development and best practise in design of both low-pressure and high-pressure tap water hydraulic components and systems for motion control as well as openended solutions various industrial applications. The business sales history confirms that the use of modern water hydraulics shows a growing turnover per year. Important industrial applications and the benefits are presented with focus on process industries such as food industry, harmaceutical processes, water mist fire fighting systems, high water pressure cleaners, water moisturising systems for a humidification, wood processing (sawmills and lumber drying processing), and industrial mobile machines and municipal machines working in environmentally sensitive surroundings. A unique breakthrough with the success of development, design and implementation is the process called Reverse Osmosis (drinking water from sea-water) by novel dedicated axial pumps and valves using special material to operate with sea-water. Modern water hydraulic technology is still new and there are a lot of problems to be solved in order to make the technique more widely available for power transmission.