The technical development of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® optimistic displacement pumps has ensured they play a key function in decreasing mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump vary is well known in numerous pumping functions including 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 extremely viscous slurry, allowing mines to preserve water. The energy effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps reduce energy costs and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“The basis of GEHO pumps’ success is our ongoing attention to technical innovation and enchancment,” says Vlot. “This also allowed us to be pioneers within the pumping of very acidic material at excessive temperatures, such as nickel slurry at more than 200°C at a mine in Madagascar.”
With their excessive capability, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over tons of of kilometres, offering one of the most value efficient and sustainable switch methods obtainable to the mining industry. These pumps have additionally played an integral position in the success of a Weir Minerals paste answer at Finland’s largest open pit mine. เกจวัดแรงดัน4บาร์ ’s Siilinjärvi mine makes use of GEHO® pumps to move tailings from the plant, attaining the required beach slope on its tailings facility to satisfy its life-of-mine technique.
Backfilling is a crucial methodology for mining to realize safety and environmental targets, and GEHO® pumps have been enabling this work. In a North American platinum operation, the equipment pumps over a thousand litres a minute of this viscous backfill material – measuring 70% solids by weight – back into the mine’s labored out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps provide an environment friendly and dependable way of dewatering from nice depths, as an alternative of using a number of smaller pumps to switch water to floor. The powerful GEHO® pump vary can do this by pumping from the bottom of a mine to the floor in only one raise – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the cost effectiveness of this resolution, an essential advantage is that it reduces the risk of 1 pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the complete dewatering function,” he says. “It also reduces the cost and maintenance necessities of getting multiple pumping stations at different levels within the mine.”
The popularity 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’ wear components. This course of is based on an in-depth understanding of the whole pumping system in which the pump operates.
“Taking under consideration how our pumps interact with these methods, we focus on key elements 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 all the moving components transfer in oil and not slurry.
He emphasises the importance of diaphragm dynamics and the necessity to control the volume of propelling liquid within the chamber. This is completed by way of the PLC management, to make certain that the diaphragm runs in the proper place.
“Rubber is nice at bending, but when it stretches it could tear,” he says. “Our goal is to extend the replacement intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to minimize back each their downtime and their complete cost of possession.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is performed through digital expertise 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 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 prospects for transferring coarse ore to the floor from deep in a mine – as a less expensive choice 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 working there shall be an skilled local service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
Share