The technical development of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® optimistic displacement pumps has ensured they play a key role 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 vitality effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps minimize vitality 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 within the pumping of very acidic materials at excessive temperatures, corresponding to 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, providing one of the most price effective and sustainable transfer methods available 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 maneuver tailings from the plant, achieving the necessary seaside slope on its tailings facility to meet its life-of-mine technique.
Backfilling is a vital technique for mining to attain safety and environmental goals, 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 – back into the mine’s labored out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps present an environment friendly and dependable means of dewatering from great depths, as a substitute of using multiple smaller pumps to switch water to surface. The powerful GEHO® pump vary can do this by pumping from the bottom of a mine to the floor in just one raise – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the cost effectiveness of this resolution, an important benefit is that it reduces the danger of one pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the complete dewatering operate,” he says. “It additionally reduces the cost and maintenance necessities of having a quantity of pumping stations at different ranges inside the mine.”
The reputation of GEHO® pumps has additionally been built on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing research and improvement into its pumps’ put on components. This process is based on an in-depth understanding of the entire pumping system during which the pump operates.
“Taking into consideration how our pumps work together with these systems, we focus on key aspects 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 elements move in oil and not slurry.
He emphasises the importance of diaphragm dynamics and the necessity to management the amount of propelling liquid in the chamber. เกจ์แรงดัน is finished through the PLC management, to make sure that the diaphragm runs in the right place.
“Rubber is nice at bending, but if it stretches it may possibly tear,” he says. “Our purpose is to increase the alternative intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to reduce both their downtime and their whole value of ownership.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is performed by way of digital technology 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 customers, informing the upkeep 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 strategies.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump solutions is the Weir Minerals’ global service network, guaranteeing that wherever our pumps are working there shall be an experienced local service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
Share