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Minimising Pump Ownership Costs

Minimising Pump Ownership Costs. The power supply costs for slurry pumping is the largest single expense on many mineral processing sites. Who makes your slurry pumping related decisions?. Process Managers focus on process efficiency, changing: Particle size distribution in slurry

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Minimising Pump Ownership Costs

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  1. Minimising Pump Ownership Costs The power supply costs for slurry pumping is the largest single expense on many mineral processing sites.

  2. Who makes your slurry pumping related decisions? • Process Managers focus on process efficiency, changing: • Particle size distribution in slurry • Flow rates • Slurry density • Maintenance Managers focus on physical efficiency: • Wet end materials • Lubrication and maintenance schedules • Stores management focus on inventory cost minimisation: • Spare parts suppliers • Stock holding Who validates the overall economic impact of decisions made by these specialists?

  3. Process Example • Increasing plant throughput through the installation of an additional screen. Upgrade achieved the desired 30% increase in production. • Subsequent change in feed particle size distribution saw additional material referred to secondary cleaning circuit. • Screen adjustment maintained a maximum load to the secondary circuit of 2.5 tonnes per hour, above which the feed pump tripped out, but the upgrade achieved the expected production increase. • An audit of the four year old upgrade system identified the pump motor size in the secondary cleaning circuit as the limiting factor. • A $5,000 motor upgrade saw losses to tails reduced by $3.2 million per year!!!

  4. Maintenance Example • Changing pump bearing assembly greasing from a manual greasing operation to a vibration analysis and automatic greasing system saw: • Availability increase from 89% up to 97% • Utilisation increase from 78% up to 93% • A 75% reduction in total maintenance costs. • What does unplanned maintenance downtime cost you each year?

  5. Stores Example • On one site the stores identified a supplier of pump spare parts that were cheaper than the OEM supplied spare parts. Adoption of these spares site wide for 16 similar pumps would reduce annual inventory cost by $320,000. • In the trials, despite apparent significant increases in wear-life, the components failed catastrophically, causing unplanned plant shut-downs. • An audit of one of the operations in which these trial components had been installed showed an average 7% increase in power requirement. • On just one pump the annual power cost increase was $16,000 with unplanned plant shut-down losses of $110,000.

  6. Who validates the economic impact of all the slurry pumping related decisions that are made on your site? • Effectively minimising production costs requires everyone to be on the same page?

  7. Pump Ownership Costs Include: • Power cost ($/kWh) • Own Labour rate ($/h) • Shutdown Labour rate ($/h) • Gland water supply cost ($/m3) • Gland water drying cost ($/m3) • Product drying cost ($/m3) • Total Stores inventory ($) • Annual cost to hold inventory stock ($) • Maintenance labour management cost ($/labour hr)

  8. Audax Enterprises is here to help • We run integrated training programmes for: • Process decision makers • Process operators • Maintenance managers • Maintenance technicians • Stores managers • See the CONTACT Page for details

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