The technical advancement of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® positive displacement pumps has ensured they play a key role in reducing mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump vary is well known in various pumping functions together with tailings, backfill, ore transportation and dewatering. Weir Minerals Global Product Manager for GEHO® positive displacement (PD) pumps, Erik Vlot, highlights the pumps’ capability to pump extremely viscous slurry, permitting mines to preserve water. The vitality efficiency of pipeline transportation also helps reduce vitality costs and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“The foundation 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 materials at excessive temperatures, corresponding to nickel slurry at greater than 200°C at a mine in Madagascar.”
With their excessive capability, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over lots of of kilometres, offering some of the cost effective and sustainable switch methods obtainable to the mining business. These pumps have additionally performed an integral role within the success of a Weir Minerals paste solution 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 fulfill its life-of-mine strategy.
Backfilling is a vital methodology for mining to attain security 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 worked out areas.
In pressure gauge ราคา of deep mines, GEHO® pumps provide an efficient and reliable method of dewatering from nice depths, as an alternative of using multiple smaller pumps to transfer water to surface. The powerful GEHO® pump vary can do that by pumping from the bottom of a mine to the surface in just one lift – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the fee effectiveness of this solution, an necessary benefit is that it reduces the risk of 1 pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the whole dewatering function,” he says. “It also reduces the price and upkeep requirements of having multiple pumping stations at completely different ranges within the mine.”
The reputation of GEHO® pumps has also been built on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing research and growth into its pumps’ put on components. This course of relies on an in-depth understanding of the entire pumping system during which the pump operates.
“Taking under consideration how our pumps interact with these systems, we focus on 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 all the shifting components move in oil and not slurry.
He emphasises the importance of diaphragm dynamics and the necessity to management the quantity of propelling liquid in the chamber. This is done via the PLC management, to make certain that the diaphragm runs in the proper position.
“Rubber is sweet at bending, but if it stretches it could tear,” he says. “Our goal is to extend the replacement intervals between diaphragm replacements, serving to mines to scale back both their downtime and their complete value of ownership.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is conducted via digital know-how so that operators can stay abreast – in real time – of the pump’s performance and situation. Weir Minerals’ digital layer for these pumps is being rolled out to clients, 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 more economical option to traditional hoisting methods.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump options is the Weir Minerals’ international service community, guaranteeing that wherever our pumps are operating there shall be an experienced local service crew to help them,” he concludes.
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