The technical development of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® constructive displacement pumps has ensured they play a key position in reducing mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump vary is well-known in various pumping purposes 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, allowing mines to conserve water. The energy effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps cut energy prices 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 in the pumping of very acidic material at excessive temperatures, such as nickel slurry at greater than 200°C at a mine in Madagascar.”
With their excessive capacity, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over lots of of kilometres, offering some of the cost efficient and sustainable switch strategies out there to the mining business. These pumps have additionally played an integral function in the success of a Weir Minerals paste solution at Finland’s largest open pit mine. Yara’s Siilinjärvi mine makes use of GEHO® pumps to move tailings from the plant, reaching the mandatory beach slope on its tailings facility to satisfy its life-of-mine technique.
Backfilling is a vital methodology for mining to attain security and environmental objectives, 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 material – measuring 70% solids by weight – back into the mine’s worked out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps provide an efficient and reliable way of dewatering from nice depths, as a substitute of utilizing a number of smaller pumps to switch water to surface. The powerful GEHO® pump vary can do this by pumping from the underside of a mine to the floor in just one lift – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the price effectiveness of this resolution, an necessary advantage is that it reduces the danger of one pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the whole dewatering perform,” he says. “It additionally reduces the price and upkeep requirements of getting a number of pumping stations at completely different levels inside the mine.”
The reputation of GEHO® pumps has also been constructed on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing analysis and development into its pumps’ wear parts. This course of relies on an in-depth understanding of the whole pumping system during which the pump operates.
“Taking under consideration how our pumps interact with these methods, we give consideration to key features of the pumps such as the diaphragm and propelling liquid system,” he says. The propelling liquid offers the barrier between the piston and the diaphragm ensuring that every one the transferring parts move in oil and never slurry.
He emphasises the importance of diaphragm dynamics and the want to control the quantity of propelling liquid within the chamber. This is completed through the PLC management, to guarantee that the diaphragm runs in the proper position.
“Rubber is good at bending, but if it stretches it could tear,” he says. “Our purpose is to extend the alternative intervals between diaphragm replacements, serving to mines to reduce both their downtime and their whole price of ownership.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is carried out via digital technology so that operators can keep abreast – in real time – of the pump’s performance and situation. เกจวัดแรงดัน300psi 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 vary, and is even exploring potentialities for transferring coarse ore to the floor from deep in a mine – as a less expensive option to conventional hoisting methods.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump options is the Weir Minerals’ international service network, making certain that wherever our pumps are operating there shall be an skilled native service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
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