Weir Minerals Africa : Pumping innovation underpins GEHO success

The technical advancement of Weir Minerals’ GEHO® optimistic displacement pumps has ensured they play a key role in reducing mines’ environmental footprint.
The GEHO® pump range is well-known in numerous pumping functions 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 extremely viscous slurry, permitting mines to preserve water. The vitality effectivity of pipeline transportation additionally helps reduce power prices and reduces mines’ carbon footprint.
“ compound gauge ราคา 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 high capability, GEHO® pumps transport bauxite or iron ore over lots of of kilometres, offering some of the cost effective and sustainable transfer methods obtainable to the mining industry. These pumps have additionally played an integral function 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 move tailings from the plant, reaching the mandatory seaside slope on its tailings facility to fulfill its life-of-mine technique.
Backfilling is an important method for mining to realize security 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 materials – measuring 70% solids by weight – again into the mine’s worked out areas.
In the context of deep mines, GEHO® pumps present an environment friendly and dependable means of dewatering from great depths, as a substitute of utilizing a quantity of smaller pumps to transfer water to surface. The powerful GEHO® pump range 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 one pump in a pumping chain failing, and disrupting the complete dewatering function,” he says. “It also reduces the fee and maintenance necessities of having a number of pumping stations at completely different ranges inside the mine.”
The status of GEHO® pumps has additionally been built on their reliability, he explains. This has resulted from Weir Minerals’ ongoing research and development into its pumps’ put on elements. This process is based on an in-depth understanding of the entire pumping system by 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 supplies the barrier between the piston and the diaphragm ensuring that each one the shifting elements move in oil and never slurry.
He emphasises the significance of diaphragm dynamics and the want to control the volume of propelling liquid within 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 tear,” he says. “Our goal is to extend the alternative intervals between diaphragm replacements, helping mines to minimize back each their downtime and their whole value of ownership.”
The monitoring of GEHO® pumps’ operation is conducted through digital expertise so that operators can stay abreast – in actual time – of the pump’s performance and situation. 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 choice to conventional hoisting methods.
“Vital to all our GEHO pump options is the Weir Minerals’ world service community, making certain that wherever our pumps are working there shall be an experienced local service crew to assist them,” he concludes.
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