How to reduce impeller leading edge wear with our innovative pre-swirl technology
Transporting slurry through pumps is tough. It’s thick, abrasive and contains a wide range of solids.
The coarse, large particles found in slurry play a major role in the leading edge wear of slurry pump impeller vane due to the way the particles travel. Inertia of the large particles means they do not follow the stream lines of the carrier fluid. This results in the large particles impacting the leading edge of the vane.
When slurry flows through a pipe the larger particles settle towards the bottom of the inlet and are pulled along by the flow, whilst the smaller particles are suspended within the slurry. This segregation of the particles in the pipe means the impeller inlet of the centrifugal pump does not see a homogenous slurry mixture.
Centrifugal pump impeller vanes are designed to meet the incoming flow and accelerate the fluid. The problem occurs when the slurry approaches the impeller of the slurry pumps there is an abrupt change in flow direction. The small, fine particles follow the fluid as it transitions from the pipe into the impeller, but the large particles do not. They continue to move in a straight line, impacting the vane leading edge as the slurry moves through the impeller. The high relative velocity between the rotating vane and the incoming particles results in the impeller leading edge wear. Loss of vane length due to impacting of the large particles results in a loss of pump performance. Eventually the pump will no longer be able to generate the head and flow required for the duty and the impeller will need to be replaced.
What have we done?
At Weir Minerals, we witness this problem time and time again in arduous mineral processing plants, and wanted to improve the wear performance of our Warman® mill circuit pumps. After careful examination our engineering team devised an innovative solution to decrease the impact wear on the vane leading edge. The Warman® throatbush with pre-swirl vanes.
Our patented Warman® throatbush with pre-swirl vanes changes the direction of the coarse solids at the bottom of the inlet pipe relative to the impeller leading edge.
How does this work?
The pre-swirl vanes change the flow of the slurry, swirling it in an anti-clockwise direction, with the rotation of the impeller, before it enters the impeller. This induced rotation of the incoming flow reduces the relative velocity between the impeller vanes and the slurry.
Pre-swirl vanes at the bottom of the throatbush are positioned with a greater angle of twist than those elsewhere on the throatbush. This is to provide the larger particles with a greater tangential velocity. Varying the pre-swirl angle in this way ensures that the relative velocity between the large particles and the vane leading edge is minimized while at the same time maintaining the correct impingement angle of the fluid on to the vane.