A large iron sand plant in New Zealand was struggling to maintain an acceptable leakage from their Warman AH slurry pumps. Having to repack the pumps with substandard gland packing in the middle of a plant operating campaign meant excessive downtime, increased labour hours not to mention often having to strip the pump to replace the wear sleeve. Add to that the repetitive gland packing adjustments during the campaign and the engineers were struggling to service the pumps.
CGI suggested the trial of a SpiralTrac throat bushing in conjunction with Chesterton Style 2212 DualPac mechanical gland packing to extend MTBF of glands, lower flush rates, fewer gland adjustments and less sleeve wear.
The results were impressive. Once installed, the slurry gland solution of the SpiralTrac and Chesterton 2212 ran for over 3 months without any adjustments even with the number of rings reduced from 5 to 3. The return on investment was within 3 months.
- Savings in Downtime
- Savings in Labour
- Savings in Flush Water
- Savings in sleeve replacement
- Savings in gland packing rings.
The engineer has committed to purchasing 4 more SpiralTrac/2212 Solutions in the next few months.
If you pump a slurry, whether it be coal mining, gold mining or iron sand and your slurry pump glands are giving you headaches, contact one of the NZ CGI team members.
