g wagon water pump

Slurry pump design

Slurry pump design

I'm in the beginning of the process of designing a slurry pump for the ag world and was wanting some advice on the pump design. It will be a centrifugal pump, I'm looking at an 8" outlet pipe - inlet pipe can be what ever it needs to be - at 8-10000 gpm at <45psi the power unit range will be from 200hp - 500hp. It need to run in a very sandy application so it needs to be wear resistant. Are cast housing better or are AR steel housings better? It needs to be very shatter proof as it occasionally have to handle fist sized rocks and similarily sized objects thanks to the various things that end up in a farmer's manure pit. If you know of any resources that would be of help or have any other questions please let me know.

Artisi

You are joking, aren't you?

Doug Hunter

I would start by benchmarking what's been done in similar applications.

LittleInch

There are many many manure slurry pumps about so why try to deign a new one?? But have you got a decimal place wrong? 10,000 US GPM is about 2,250 m3/hr. in an 8 inch pipe that's over 16 m/sec / 55 ft/sec. That's an insane velocity. As you can see from the links, most manure pumps are pretty basic open impellors to allow through the odd rock or two and are usually cast or ductile iron. Be warned that "slurry" in the pumping world is usually a suspension of sand / gravel etc in water and not liquid manure. If it is true slurrey then abrasion and wear are big on the list of issues. Many systems come with rubber linings attached to them to reduce wear. But you are seriously reinventing the wheel here and I don't understand why.

pumpbuzz

Thanks for your input. As to why I'm "re-inventing the wheel"... The current manure pumps on the market are for one or more reasons defective, i.e. Nuhn has a poor quality pump housing and are pricey; Dryhill has a good overall design but very poor quality and terrible service; GEA has poor service and very low GPM. I work for a company that has been a liquid manure equipment dealer for the past 20+ years and I know there is a market for high quality manure pumps with relatively high GPMs and superior service. FYI In the liquid manure market you aren't even competitive if you can't pump at least 8,000 US GPM as far the pipe diameter goes the Dryhill is currently using 8" Sch 40 is getting 9,000 GPM ish

LittleInch

Well the website you link shows the 8" models do about 6,000 gpm. Thats ok for short duration, very short discharge pipes. You quote 45 psi which seems aa lot to me. All the manure pumps I've ever seen do look VERY basic with straight impellor blades and I would guess very inefficient designs. Ever though about a screw pump instead? The pump casings are your big issue and I can't guess what the sandy nature would do to a lot of these. As said I would get some sort of cast iron or ductile iron and line it with UHMW PE or similar type of plastic or rubber flexible coating. It's one of those areas where no one really gives it much thought other than the cheaper the better for something which spends 360 days a year parked in a farmers barn.

TenPenny

In the slurry pump business, Weir is probably the leader; I would suggest you look at their offerings. If you google around, you can find their slurry pump application manual, which guides you to decisions on how to select materials based on the slurry concentration and the hardness / sharpness of the particulate. This guides you to whether you want hard metals or rubbers. In a slurry pump, you really really really want replaceable liners. Another brand, the Mission Magnum pumps are highly respected in pumping bentonite clay in oilfield applications. ITT Goulds (actually Morris in the day) used to make a specific version of the model JC slurry pump for use on hydroseed units. Cornell and Pioneer make pumps specifically for potato processing, which would have lots of sand particles. To be honest, I'd consider looking at the existing market offerings; if you are determined to do a self branded unit, I would suggest looking at what would fit and then look at some manufacturing/branding arrangement from offshore suppliers.