Rubber Slurry Pumping

[dezirak]

Currently we are pumping a slurry of rubber particles in hydrocarbon using a lobe style PD pump. The consistancy can be thought of as chunky milk.
Pump maintenance issues occasionally arise due to agglomerations of rubber particles larger than the lobe void space (sometimes quite a bit larger). We are currently investigating the use of a Gorator macerator pump before our lobe style pump to control partical size before the lobe pump to aid in both partical size distribution as well as protect our PD pump downstream.
Link to pump in question:

http://www.flsmidth.com/en-US/Produ...y+Handling/GoratorPump/Dorr-OliverGoratorPump

My questions are:
1. Has anyone else tried anything similar to this or have any experience with the robustness of this pump? How well does it due under prolonged deadhead conditions?
2. Is there a PD pump that would be more resilent to partical size issues and provide a grinding action in one pump? (a pump capable of this tied to a VFD would be the ideal solution IMO).

Thanks
-Dezirak

 

[DubMac]

Dezirak,

Look at a progressive cavity pump; they can accept all sorts of sizes and shapes, stringy or solid. More forgiving than a rotary lobe.

If stator materials are chosen properly, this may be the best at pumping irregular sizes, shapes, and hardnesses.

Moyno, Seepex are both good manufacturers

 

[dezirak]

Thank you for your suggestion.

I was originally considering a moyno pump to get around reliability issues, but a major issue is we need to reduce particle size due to other process needs downstream of the PD pump (separate but potentially connected project). Also, about 20-30 years back, a Moyno pump was tried, (or so I hear), for this pumping application but there were problems with inlet plugging that sounded vaguely familiar to the type of issues we still see...

One of the other potential solutions (if it can handle hydrocarbon service), may be something as simple as this:

http://www.franklinmiller.com/super-shredder-wastewater.html

Everytime I try searching for anything on this subject I am directed at waste water treatment...

We need PD pump power at a decent flow rate (150-200 GPM) with some type of particle size control. A combined solution would be ideal, but if not that, then a solution that at least makes use of the existing pump to keep costs from becoming to prohibitive.

 

[unclesyd]

You may want to take a look at the Discflo pump for your process. We use it to pump several challenging process fluids.

http://www.discflo.com/discflo-pump-products

 

[Chance17]

I worked for about 5-years at a rubber plant.
We exclusively used centrifugal pumps for 30% slurry in water. The pumps would ocassionally plug.
But we used high pressure staem to unplug

 

[micalbrch]

Try a diaphragm pump. They can handle big particles. Some are available with flapper valves which are especially designed for slurries containing big particles. Temperature might be a limitation (if there is any) but it is worth a try.