A major county in California found itself in a crisis when its irrigation pumps could not produce the required performance, cutting off critical water supply to the reservoirs and aqueducts. These pumps suffered from high vibration and repeated failures characterized by extreme wear to the propellers, shafts, and bearings.
Case Studies
Circulating Water Pump Repair & Refurbishment
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. Continue reading
Pump Testing Overcomes Challenging Suction Configuration
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. Continue reading
State of the Art Parts: Impeller with New Hydraulic Design
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. Continue reading
Throwback: Expedited Vertical Pump Repair & Engineered Upgrade
A critical vertical pump for a 750 MW unit was sent to Hydro South in mid-December 2012 for inspection and repair. The massive pump weighed more than 66,000 lbs. and was 32 feet long and 12 feet tall. When the pump was disassembled, Hydro South’s engineers discovered that a large 42” x 68” section of the discharge elbow was broken, allowing direct flow to bypass the turning section and flow directly into the stuffing box area.
The discharge elbow was made of casted cast iron and could not be welded. A replacement of this size would take around eight months to order and receive. Continue reading