Extreme pumps/Peter Snow, Godwin Pumps Ltd, US and Dave Braithwaite, Godwin Pumps Ltd, UK. Discuss the development of pumps used in challenging situations

摘要

The coal mining industry is faced with some of the most challenging pumping applications in the world. Recently several situations with extreme pumping requirements presented a challenge that helped to inspire the design engineers at Godwin Pumps to create a new generation of extremely high headed portable pumps. The result was a portable pump with heads in excess of 180 m and flows over 400m~3/hour. A coal mine in West Virginia was faced with dredging and pumping a settlement pond up a 120 m high wall over a distance of almost 1.7 km to the discharge point. The settlement pond had not been dredged in 30 years. The last time it had been dredged a dragline was used, which, at today's prices, would cost 100,000 US dollars. In addition, environmental regulations now require the safe removal and disposal of the dredged material, making the use of a drag line impossible. What was needed was a portable pump that was built for the use of either the construction market or the mining market and was capable of producing high discharge head.