The technical development of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® optimistic displacement pumps has ensured they play a key function in lowering mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump range is well known in various pumping purposes together with tailings, backfill, ore transportation and dewatering. Weir Minerals Global Product Manager for GEHO® optimistic displacement (PD) pumps, Erik Vlot, highlights the pumps’ capacity to pump highly viscous slurry, allowing mines to conserve water. The energy effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps minimize power costs and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“The basis of GEHO pumps’ success is our ongoing attention to technical innovation and improvement,” says Vlot. “This additionally allowed us to be pioneers within the pumping of very acidic material at excessive temperatures, corresponding to nickel slurry at more than 200°C at a mine in Madagascar.”
With their high capacity, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over tons of of kilometres, offering one of the most cost efficient and sustainable switch methods obtainable to the mining industry. These pumps have additionally performed an integral role in the success of a Weir Minerals paste resolution at Finland’s largest open pit mine. Yara’s Siilinjärvi mine uses GEHO® pumps to move tailings from the plant, attaining the required seaside slope on its tailings facility to satisfy its life-of-mine strategy.
Backfilling is an important method for mining to realize safety and environmental targets, and GEHO® pumps have been enabling this work. In a North American platinum operation, the gear pumps over a thousand litres a minute of this viscous backfill materials – measuring 70% solids by weight – again into the mine’s labored out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps present an efficient and dependable means of dewatering from nice depths, as a substitute of using a number of smaller pumps to transfer water to surface. The highly effective GEHO® pump range can do this by pumping from the underside of a mine to the surface in just one raise – even over kilometres.
“Apart from เกจวัดแรงดันดิจิตอลราคา of this resolution, an important advantage is that it reduces the chance of one pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the complete dewatering function,” he says. “It additionally reduces the fee and upkeep requirements of having a quantity of pumping stations at different ranges throughout the mine.”
The popularity of GEHO® pumps has also been constructed on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing analysis and improvement into its pumps’ wear parts. This process is based on an in-depth understanding of the entire pumping system during which the pump operates.
“Taking under consideration how our pumps work together with these techniques, we focus on key aspects of the pumps such as the diaphragm and propelling liquid system,” he says. The propelling liquid provides the barrier between the piston and the diaphragm making certain that all the transferring parts transfer in oil and not slurry.
He emphasises the importance of diaphragm dynamics and the need to management the quantity of propelling liquid in the chamber. This is completed through the PLC control, to guarantee that the diaphragm runs in the right position.
“Rubber is sweet at bending, but if it stretches it can tear,” he says. “Our purpose is to increase the alternative intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to scale back each their downtime and their whole price of possession.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is carried out through digital know-how so that operators can stay abreast – in real time – of the pump’s efficiency and situation. Weir Minerals’ digital layer for these pumps is being rolled out to prospects, informing the maintenance schedules and enhancing pump availability.
Vlot notes that Weir Minerals continues to innovate with the GEHO® pump range, and is even exploring possibilities for transferring coarse ore to the floor from deep in a mine – as a less expensive choice to traditional hoisting methods.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump options is the Weir Minerals’ world service network, guaranteeing that wherever our pumps are working there will be an experienced local service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
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