Increasing life of wear parts threefold

Sand treatment plants with wet process operations frequently face problems with excessive pump wear, due to the high abrasiveness of the product. The GSM Montfrin-Meynes alluvium quarry in France overcame maintenance problems by upgrading their cyclone module pump to a double-adjustment system that increased wear life by a factor of three.

Staying a leader in aggregates : GSM, a company in the HeidelbergCement Group, is a leader in the aggregates market in France, with 90 quarries and 670 employees. In the Languedoc region, the company manages nine quarry operations, including the Montfrin-Meynes site in Nîmes, France. This site produces 200,000 tons of alluvium per year.

The quarry mines a silico-calcareous deposit with an abrasiveness of 1,980 g/t. The material passes through a scrubber and a cyclone module powered by a Metso HR200 pump. Larger material is fed through Metso's Nordberg® HP4™ cone crusher to produce crushed sand of various sizes, which is then washed in a cyclone module fed by a Metso HR150 double-adjustment pump.

One solution: double-adjustment : since 2008, when Metso delivered its Nordberg® HP4™ cone crusher to the quarry, the service technician and the quarry manager had developed a good relationship, due in part to the technician’s emphasis on details that matter. It became evident over time that GSM was experiencing wear problems with previously installed pumps. The wear parts needed to be replaced too often. Maintenance of these pumps was complicated and unsafe, plus also very time consuming, and the quarry wanted to avoid expensive downtime.

“We organized a meeting with the customer to closely examine the details of the problem,” says Anthony Isse, Metso service technician for this area. “We presented a Metso pump solution with a focus on the advantages of the pump: easy maintenance, increased safety, wide range of materials and advanced technologies to optimize the life of the wear parts.”

GSM studied the offer and advantages of the pumps, especially the double-adjustment feature, which optimizes the replacement of wear parts and therefore reduced maintenance needs and increases the overall life of the pump. “We decided to invest in the HR150 double-adjustment pump, also because we knew the after-sales follow-up would live up to our expectations, which was an important element for us,” says Eric Viale, GSM quarry manager.

We decided to invest in the HR150 double-adjustment pump, also because we knew the after-sales follow-up would live up to our expectations.

Safety and ease of adjustment: the double-adjustment system recommended by the Metso sales and technical team provided a significant advantage for abrasive applications in which the impeller as well as the front and rear shields of the pump casing generally experience excessive wear.

The frame of double-adjustment pumps differs from standard pumps in that it allows optimum adjustment of the internal, front and back clearances of the pump. The rear wheel clearance is changed by means of an adjusting screw mounted on the pump. The front impeller adjustment enables the front play to be reduced. Both allow a constant front and rear play to be maintained to truly optimize wear part life times.

Cutting the budget by three: thanks to Metso’s option of several sealing systems, pump casing linings and impellers, it is possible to configure a pump to the precise needs and optimize the process. This allows a pump to be adapted to any process changes.

Life of the parts was three times longer than those of our old pumps.

For this case, a Metso HM150 double-adjustment pump was installed and optimized for the correct sand concentration, the maintenance needs of the operation dropped drastically. This was a rubber-lined pump with a high chrome metal impeller and a clear water pressure injection seal.

As Eric Viale says, “After the reconfiguration, Anthony regularly monitored the wear of the parts and trained us to adjust the pump. We quickly saw that the life of the parts was three times longer than those of our old pumps. As a result, we stop much less frequently than before to change the wear parts, thanks to the optimization of their service life, which has enabled us to reduce the pump’s operating budget by a factor of three.”

He goes on to say that maintenance time on the pump during parts replacement is quick and easy, due to the impeller release mechanism that rapidly allows uncoupling. The system is also very safe during maintenance operations.

“Added to all this, we also have the follow-up that we wanted from our after-sales technician, who continuously provides us with new solutions and trains our staff,” Viale concludes with satisfaction.

Anthony ISSE discusses with Eric Viale, GSM Montfrin Quarry Manager, how double-adjustment pump increased the operation and reduced the parts operating budget.

GSM Montfrin-Meynes – Part of an aggregate colossus: HeidelbergCement, owner of GSM, has been in operation for 140 years, and is number one in worldwide aggregate production. As a leader in the field of concrete for building purposes, they have almost 60,000 employees working at more than 3,000 production sites around the world.

Because cement production is raw material and energy intensive, HeidelbergCement builds their long-term success on sustainable business practices, using innovative production processes, the development of new products and the use of alternative raw materials and fuels.