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Mining pumps often fly under the radar as an opportunity to reduce carbon emissions, but the impact of improving pump efficiency can be huge.

We saw this first hand recently, with a large remote mineral processing plant in Western Australia. They were experiencing frequent and costly shutdowns due to the packed shaft seals in their high-pressure tailing pumps failing.

Large amounts of process water were required to flush the pumps gland seals. Due to the remote location of the site, diesel engine gensets are used to power the site. The large quantities of flush water were consuming hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel each year.

The gland packing and sleeves constantly wore out and needed to be replaced every 3 months.

Site management had set a goal to double the time between pump failures. We took on the challenge and made suggestions on how to rearrange the gland flush arrangement.

Across three tailings pumps in series the changes we suggested have resulted in saving over 830t of carbon emissions per annum. The gland packing no longer needs to be replaced every 3 months and now lasts until the liners and impellers need to be replaced. This ensured expensive wear components were not replaced prematurely. The end result, we more than doubled the uptime of the entire tailings pump line.

We are looking forward to seeing the overall impact as the changes are rolled out to more of the pump fleet.

If you would like more information on the cost analysis, please contact us at info@7dteam.com

Results:

• Reduction of 838,200kg of carbon emissions p.a.
• More than 20% savings in spares, as they are no longer disposed of prematurely
• Large amount of process water saved
• The time between tailings line shuts has doubled