A major utility company had a Foster Wheeler 60 DF horizontal split case circulating water pump that required repair. They decided to complete the refurbishment during a 14-day unit outage by using the Hydro South service center. The plant had a spare impeller, shaft, and shaft sleeves in inventory. The availability of spare parts usually facilitates an efficient and trouble-free repair. Unfortunately, it was discovered that the parts available were not properly designed for use in the existing pump.
Before the pump was pulled for the outage, the spare parts were sent to the Hydro South facility for inspection. This is where the first problem was discovered- the threaded shaft and shaft sleeves were designed for the incorrect rotation. If they had been installed as-is, the rotation of the pump would have resulted in displacement of the sleeves. The plant elected to modify the parts to prevent the sleeves from backing off during operation. Hydro South accomplished this by drilling and tapping the sleeves for set screws and dimpling the shaft.
A municipal water treatment plant recently had one of their service water pumps refurbished. The refurbished pump is a single-stage, bottom suction BB1 (between bearing) pump with a double suction impeller. In order to validate the performance of the pump, the plant requested testing services from the Hydro Performance Test Lab. The testing services included a Hydraulic Institute certified performance test, a Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH) test, and a bearing housing vibration test.
State of the Art Parts: Hydro Parts Solutions recently supplied a new impeller as part of a project to improve the operation of a pump that was not performing per the OEM curve. The first step in the process was reverse-engineering the used sample impellers. The reverse-engineered model was used by Hydro’s Global Engineering team to perform a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to determine the best possible hydraulic design for the plant’s expected operating range.
Despite the extensive scope of work, Hydro’s Global Engineering and Parts Solutions teams were able to perform the reverse engineering, CFD, hydraulic redesign, and part manufacture within six and a half weeks. This work was completed as a routine delivery for our customer. This project highlights the extensive capabilities Hydro has in-house that streamline engineered projects and provide our customers with a superior product in a lead time that exceeds the industry standard.
A critical vertical pump for a 750 MW unit was sent to 
