Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
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the pump will be working to determine the best motor enclosure. It is also crit- ical to consider the pump's voltage requirements, variable speed options and controllers. Diesel drives are often selected for portable applications, but they are the least efficient pumps because of their design. Submersible pumps are effi- cient for certain applications, but not for all. Vertical turbines generally will be the most efficient pumps across a range of mining applications. Turbines feature a sleek hydronic design that contains four basic sub- assemblies (See Figure 1). A multistage bowl assembly is used to submerge the pump into the liquid and control the hydraulic performance. A column, or riser, moves the liquid to the surface. The discharge or well changes the direction of the fluid from vertical to horizontal and connects to the piping system. Submersible configurations (like the pumps used at the Colorado gold mine) contain a submerged thrust that carries the motor, and the motor pumps the water to the surface. Keeping the solution moving at the Colorado mine is a top priority. If the mine isn't pumping pregnant solution, it isn't pouring gold. By selecting the proper pumps, companies can keep work progressing and costs in line. Savings in South America GIW Industries, a leading supplier of heavy-duty, centrifugal slurry pumps, related a recent success at a South American copper mine. GIW said its solution quadrupled pump wear life and created dramatic savings for the mine's tailing-pumping operations. Again noting that mining-related pump duties in general—and in this case, copper in particular—involve working with difficult materials, GIW pointed out that, as a result, mining companies must carefully monitor wear of their slurry pumps and usually have to schedule frequent shutdowns to replace worn parts. The cost of this maintenance goes far beyond just the price of parts; downtime and lost rev- enue can run into hundreds of thou- sands of dollars. The South American company had struggled for years to reduce mainte- nance downtime in its tailings opera- tions. The material was wearing out pumps more quickly than other equip- ment in the tailings line, increasing the frequency of downtime. Ronnie Willis, senior product manager–new materials at GIW, said, "They were having such severe wear that they were repairing the tailings pumps every 400 to 450 hours." GIW provided the South American copper mine with a solution. An LSA centrifugal slurry pump was installed in a tailings booster application and GIW's exclusive Enduraclad material was applied to the new suction liner. "With the application of this new material," Willis said, "they've been able to extend wear life up to 2,000 hours and also improved wear life of other related pump parts." 74 E&MJ; • DECEMBER 2015 www.e-mj.com P U M P I N G S Y S T E M S