Weir Minerals Africa : Pumping innovation underpins GEHO success

The technical advancement of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® positive displacement pumps has ensured they play a key role in decreasing mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump vary is well known in various pumping purposes including tailings, backfill, ore transportation and dewatering. Weir Minerals Global Product Manager for GEHO® optimistic displacement (PD) pumps, Erik Vlot, highlights the pumps’ ability to pump highly viscous slurry, permitting mines to preserve water. The power effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps cut energy costs and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“The foundation of GEHO pumps’ success is our ongoing attention to technical innovation and improvement,” says Vlot. “This also allowed us to be pioneers within the pumping of very acidic material at excessive temperatures, corresponding to nickel slurry at greater than 200°C at a mine in Madagascar.”
With their high capacity, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over tons of of kilometres, offering some of the cost effective and sustainable transfer strategies obtainable to the mining business. เกจวัดแรงดันลมดิจิตอล have additionally played an integral position in the success of a Weir Minerals paste answer at Finland’s largest open pit mine. Yara’s Siilinjärvi mine makes use of 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 an important methodology for mining to realize safety and environmental targets, and GEHO® pumps have been enabling this work. In a North American platinum operation, the tools pumps over a thousand litres a minute of this viscous backfill material – measuring 70% solids by weight – again 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 great depths, instead of utilizing a number of smaller pumps to transfer water to surface. The highly effective GEHO® pump vary can do this by pumping from the underside of a mine to the surface in only one raise – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the cost effectiveness of this solution, an essential benefit is that it reduces the risk of 1 pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the whole dewatering perform,” he says. “It also reduces the price and upkeep requirements of getting multiple pumping stations at different levels throughout the mine.”
The popularity of GEHO® pumps has also been constructed on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing analysis and development into its pumps’ wear elements. This course of is based on an in-depth understanding of the entire pumping system during which the pump operates.
“Taking under consideration how our pumps interact with these techniques, we give attention to 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 guaranteeing that each one the shifting components transfer in oil and not slurry.
He emphasises the significance of diaphragm dynamics and the necessity to management the volume of propelling liquid in the chamber. This is done via the PLC control, to make certain that the diaphragm runs in the proper position.
“Rubber is good at bending, but if it stretches it could tear,” he says. “Our goal is to extend the substitute intervals between diaphragm replacements, serving to mines to scale back both their downtime and their total cost of ownership.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is carried out via digital know-how in order that operators can stay abreast – in real time – of the pump’s efficiency and condition. 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 surface from deep in a mine – as a more economical choice to conventional hoisting strategies.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump solutions is the Weir Minerals’ world service community, guaranteeing that wherever our pumps are operating there shall be an skilled local service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
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