Kelair Pumps Australia was contacted a few years ago to help a major refinery that was having problems with an existing magnetic drive pump. The client was pumping sour water with fine solids caused by pump scale. Sour water is the wastewater that is produced from atmospheric and vacuum crude columns at refineries.

The client was using a magnetic drive centrifugal pump on sour water. Being a difficult product to seal, this application seamed to suite a sealless magnetic pump. The sealless pump has the advantage that it will completely contain the product within the pump. Motor shaft and pump shaft are not physically connected – the pump shaft is driven via magnetic force. This will have the advantage that there is no maintenance due to failure of mechanical seals, minimised maintenance cost, no loss and clean-up of expensive product and of course, safety to both the environment and personnel.

But in this instance the magnetic drive pump was struggling, due to a scale build up within the pipe work. Because the product pumped is circulated within the magnetic driven pump via fine lubricating passages to act as a lubricant and coolant for the magnets. If those passages are blocked the magnetic driven pump will quickly wear and fail.

We suggested using a Sandpiper containment duty pump. The Sandpiper containment duty pump is ideal for highly corrosive and hazardous chemicals. It has been exclusively designed with containment chambers to keep accidental spills from entering the air valve, protecting plant, environment and personnel. Furthermore, the Sandpiper containment duty pump is designed to accommodate visual, mechanical and low voltage leak detection devices. It is available in aluminium, cast iron, stainless steel, polypropylene and kynar. As the client is pumping sour water, they wanted the stainless-steel option for the pump with visual leak detection.

The Sandpiper containment duty pump has a 6.00mm solid handling capacity which is well suited for the client’s requirements. We further offered a pulsating dampener to be installed on the discharge side to reduce the pulsation in the line, however pulsation wasn’t a concern for the client, so they didn’t purchase it. After excellent success with the Sandpiper containment duty pump, the client then went on the purchase another pump for a different application.