The technical development of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® optimistic displacement pumps has ensured they play a key position in lowering mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump range is well-known in varied pumping applications together with tailings, backfill, ore transportation and dewatering. Weir Minerals Global Product Manager for GEHO® optimistic displacement (PD) pumps, Erik Vlot, highlights the pumps’ capability to pump highly viscous slurry, allowing mines to preserve water. The power effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps reduce 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 in 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, providing one of the most price efficient and sustainable transfer strategies out there to the mining business. These pumps have additionally played an integral position in the success of a Weir Minerals paste answer at Finland’s largest open pit mine. Yara’s Siilinjärvi mine makes use of GEHO® pumps to move tailings from the plant, reaching the required seashore slope on its tailings facility to fulfill its life-of-mine strategy.
Backfilling is a crucial methodology for mining to achieve safety and environmental targets, and GEHO® pumps have been enabling this work. In a North American platinum operation, the tools pumps over a thousand litres a minute of this viscous backfill materials – measuring 70% solids by weight – again into the mine’s worked out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps present an efficient and dependable means of dewatering from great depths, instead of utilizing multiple smaller pumps to switch water to floor. The powerful GEHO® pump vary can do that by pumping from the underside of a mine to the surface in just one lift – even over kilometres.
“Apart from เกจวัดแรงดูด of this resolution, an necessary benefit is that it reduces the chance of 1 pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the entire dewatering function,” he says. “It also reduces the cost and maintenance requirements of having a quantity of pumping stations at different ranges throughout the mine.”
The status 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’ put on elements. This process is predicated on an in-depth understanding of the whole pumping system in which the pump operates.
“Taking into consideration how our pumps interact with these techniques, we give attention to key elements of the pumps such as the diaphragm and propelling liquid system,” he says. The propelling liquid supplies the barrier between the piston and the diaphragm guaranteeing that each one the moving elements transfer in oil and never slurry.
He emphasises the significance of diaphragm dynamics and the necessity to management the quantity of propelling liquid in the chamber. This is finished by way of the PLC control, to guarantee that the diaphragm runs in the proper position.
“Rubber is sweet at bending, but if it stretches it could tear,” he says. “Our aim is to extend the substitute intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to cut back both their downtime and their whole price of possession.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is performed by way of digital know-how so that operators can keep abreast – in real time – of the pump’s performance and situation. Weir Minerals’ digital layer for these pumps is being rolled out to customers, informing the maintenance schedules and enhancing pump availability.
Vlot notes that Weir Minerals continues to innovate with the GEHO® pump vary, and is even exploring prospects for transferring coarse ore to the surface from deep in a mine – as a more economical option to traditional hoisting strategies.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump solutions is the Weir Minerals’ world service network, guaranteeing that wherever our pumps are working there shall be an experienced local service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
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