Maintaining pumps with minimum effort

Paul Boughton

Time is a critical economic factor in almost all industry sectors. Customers are increasingly unwilling or unable to wait for deliveries and global competition constantly introduces new products to the market. What this means for production is that processes must inter-relate smoothly and downtimes must be avoided as much as possible. The pump expert Netzsch has therefore developed the Full Service in Place (FSIP) concept for pump systems. This makes interventions in the pump equipment possible without dismantling it from the piping. The new design saves time on inspection, repair and cleaning work while even reducing the required installation space.

To enable implementation of the FSIP principle for this pump type, a special inspection cover was engineered and integrated in the design. The cover is held by five screws that can be removed completely without special tools and in a short amount of time.

The maintenance opening is located where the stator connects with the pump housing. Removing the cover provides access to a two-piece clamping coupling connecting the joint on the rotor with the coupling rod. Only one screw needs to be removed here to separate the rotor-stator element from the coupling rod. The rotating unit can subsequently be simply lifted out, and the inside of the pump is freely accessible from flange to flange. As all parts are removed toward the side instead from the end of the pump, hardly any space is needed for dismantling. The previously required dismantling length is no longer an issue; the necessary installation space is therefore shortened considerably – an important factor for the usually quite long progressing cavity pumps.

In addition to convenient dismantling, attention was given during the revised design so that handling or re-installation of inspected parts would be as easy as possible. The FSIP pump is designed for the pump housing to act as a support and orientation scale at the same time. The special layout thus ensures that each part finds its intended location, no need to re-adjust anything. All wearing parts can be replaced in less than half the previous time. The actual delivery geometry is not touched by the changes. Even more, the performance is thus preserved. Conventional Nemo pumps can simply be converted to the advanced version of the FSIP pump.

The new pump design works especially well and saves resources when combined with another innovation from Netzsch, the iFD-stator 2.0. This is a stator system where the elastomer is not vulcanised in the housing, but is fixed by axial compression. As this allows the continued use of the housing together with a new stator elastomer, replacement takes but a few minutes.

The iFD-stator also increases economy, as the stator moves a defined distance along with the rotation the pump starts with less breakaway torque and which reduces the torque during running operation. In this manner, roughly 25% less energy is consumed during the entire process, and the drives of the pumps can be dimensioned smaller accordingly. Furthermore, because of the lower load, the stators last approximately twice as long. In conjunction with the simpler maintenance due to the FSIP concept, unavoidable downtimes are reduced to a minimum.

For more information, visit www.engineerlive.com/epe

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