Plant Maintenance

This Plant Maintenance articles series relates to doing maintenance and care on operating plant and equipment. It includes coverage of maintenance engineering issues, and topics on the maintenance of process plant operating assets and industrial equipment.

The Plant Maintenance series of articles are provided with the permission of Feed Forward Publications and Lifetime Reliability Solutions.

NOTE: The series does not include coverage of related commercial or vendor software or database management applications.

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Open Trickle Chutes for Damp Bulk Product

What readers will learn in this article.

The flow of bulk materials through chutes is affected by internal properties of the bulk product.
Friction exists between the chute walls and a moving product.
Momentum and velocity must be maintained when running bulk
materials through chutes.
Bulk materials chute design and use considerations.

For the effective flow of a cohesive (sticks to itself) product, a chute must be designed to maintain momentum & velocity. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 2 Comments

Changing the Service Duty of a Pump

What readers will learn in this article.

Centrifugal pumps can be moved to a new service.
The impeller size, impeller speed, and motor power need to match the new service.
That Similarity Law formula is used in calculating the new impeller size, speed, and motor power.
Introduction to centrifugal pump curves and their use.

When there is a need to determine a new service duty for a centrifugal pump, and no performance curves are available, the recommended method is to use the Similarity Laws. These laws are derived by the use of [Read more…]