The technical advancement of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® positive displacement pumps has ensured they play a key function in lowering mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump vary is well known in varied pumping applications including tailings, backfill, ore transportation and dewatering. Weir Minerals Global Product Manager for GEHO® optimistic displacement (PD) pumps, Erik Vlot, highlights the pumps’ capacity to pump highly viscous slurry, allowing mines to conserve water. The power effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps minimize power prices and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“The basis of GEHO pumps’ success is our ongoing consideration to technical innovation and enchancment,” says Vlot. “This also allowed us to be pioneers within the pumping of very acidic material 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 lots of of kilometres, providing one of the most price efficient and sustainable switch methods out there to the mining industry. Top secret have also played an integral function within 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 move tailings from the plant, reaching the necessary seashore slope on its tailings facility to fulfill its life-of-mine strategy.
Backfilling is an important method for mining to realize safety and environmental targets, and GEHO® pumps have been enabling this work. In a North American platinum operation, the equipment pumps over a thousand litres a minute of this viscous backfill material – measuring 70% solids by weight – back into the mine’s worked out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps provide an efficient and reliable method of dewatering from great depths, instead of utilizing a number of smaller pumps to transfer water to floor. The powerful GEHO® pump range can do this by pumping from the underside of a mine to the surface in only one carry – even over kilometres.
“Apart from the price effectiveness of this solution, an essential benefit is that it reduces the danger of one pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the whole dewatering function,” he says. “It also reduces the price and maintenance requirements of having a quantity of pumping stations at different ranges throughout the mine.”
The popularity of GEHO® pumps has also been built on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing analysis and improvement into its pumps’ put on parts. This process is predicated on an in-depth understanding of the entire pumping system by which the pump operates.
“Taking under consideration how our pumps work together with these techniques, we give consideration to key features 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 never slurry.
He emphasises the significance of diaphragm dynamics and the want to control the volume of propelling liquid in the chamber. This is completed via the PLC control, to ensure that the diaphragm runs in the proper place.
“Rubber is good at bending, but if it stretches it could possibly tear,” he says. “Our aim is to extend the substitute intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to cut back each their downtime and their whole value of ownership.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is carried out via digital expertise in order 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 clients, informing the maintenance 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 choice to traditional hoisting methods.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump options is the Weir Minerals’ global service network, ensuring that wherever our pumps are working there will be an skilled local service crew to support them,” he concludes.
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