The technical advancement of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® constructive displacement pumps has ensured they play a key function in reducing mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump range is well-known in varied pumping purposes including tailings, backfill, ore transportation and dewatering. Weir Minerals Global Product Manager for GEHO® constructive displacement (PD) pumps, Erik Vlot, highlights the pumps’ capability to pump highly viscous slurry, allowing mines to preserve water. The power effectivity of pipeline transportation also helps cut power costs and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“The foundation of GEHO pumps’ success is our ongoing attention to technical innovation and enchancment,” says Vlot. “This additionally allowed us to be pioneers within the pumping of very acidic material at high temperatures, corresponding to nickel slurry at greater than 200°C at a mine in Madagascar.”
With their high capability, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over lots of of kilometres, providing some of the price efficient and sustainable transfer strategies out there to the mining trade. These pumps have also performed an integral role in 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, attaining the necessary seashore slope on its tailings facility to satisfy its life-of-mine strategy.
Backfilling is a vital methodology for mining to attain safety 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 material – 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 reliable means of dewatering from nice depths, as an alternative of utilizing multiple smaller pumps to switch water to floor. The powerful GEHO® pump range can do that by pumping from the underside of a mine to the surface in just one carry – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the fee effectiveness of this resolution, an essential benefit is that it reduces the danger of 1 pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the entire dewatering function,” he says. “It also reduces the fee and maintenance requirements of having multiple pumping stations at totally different levels inside the mine.”
The status of GEHO® pumps has additionally been constructed on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing research and growth into its pumps’ put on parts. This course of relies on an in-depth understanding of the whole pumping system by which the pump operates.
ไดอะแฟรม Taking under consideration how our pumps interact with these methods, we concentrate on key features of the pumps such as the diaphragm and propelling liquid system,” he says. The propelling liquid provides the barrier between the piston and the diaphragm making certain that all the moving elements transfer in oil and never slurry.
He emphasises the significance of diaphragm dynamics and the want to management the volume of propelling liquid in the chamber. This is done via the PLC management, to make sure that the diaphragm runs in the right position.
“Rubber is sweet at bending, but when it stretches it can tear,” he says. “Our purpose is to increase the alternative intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to minimize back both their downtime and their complete value of possession.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is conducted by way of digital technology in order that operators can stay abreast – in actual time – of the pump’s performance and condition. Weir Minerals’ digital layer for these pumps is being rolled out to prospects, informing the upkeep schedules and enhancing pump availability.
Vlot notes that Weir Minerals continues to innovate with the GEHO® pump vary, and is even exploring prospects for transferring coarse ore to the surface from deep in a mine – as a more economical option to traditional hoisting strategies.
“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 native service crew to support them,” he concludes.
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