Slurry Pump Seal Cooling and Seal Support System

What is Mechanical Seal Support?

Mechanical seals are often found in various pumping systems as they are a great sealing solution that prevents slurry and liquids from escaping the pump. A common issue with pumps, in general, is that liquid can escape from certain areas due to the construction and physical nature of the pump. Liquid most often can escape from where the shaft enters through the volute and connects to the impeller or rotor. While a mechanical seal provides a great seal, it also generates a lot of heat due to friction. Too much heat will irreparably damage the seal, leading to pump failures. Due to this, a cooling system, or commonly called a seal support system, must be in place to prevent this from happening. A seal support system is a way to cool down and provide longevity to mechanical seals found in slurry pumps and other heavy-duty, industrial pumping applications.

The EDDY Pump Seal Support System

We’re using a double mechanical seal on the vast majority of our slurry pumps. A double mechanical seal consists of dual metal faces in contact with each other, one of which is stationary and the other rotates along with the shaft. As the shaft rotates, the metal seal provides an excellent seal, however, it generates a large amount of heat in the process. To function correctly, a mechanical seal needs to be flushed with a cool, clean liquid to remove excess heat from the seal faces. This is accomplished through the use of sealing systems and the various configurations of seal flush plans (API Plans) that can achieve this.

Closed-loop vs Open-loop Seal Support

For the most part, we use a 53A Plan closed-loop system. We use a closed-loop system because a lot of the times our pump will be mounted onto the end of an excavator or cable deployed from a crane. This makes it difficult and not always feasible to continuously pump clean, fresh water into the cooling system, which is what you’d find in an open-loop cooling system. Closed-loop systems are often preferred because they are more energy and resource-efficient and are more “Plug-and-Play” than open-loop cooling systems which require additional hookups and installations before pumping can begin.

The above is the plan that EDDY Pump mainly uses for seal support. The dual mechanical tungsten carbide seals are pictured above as the yellow and blue seals along the shaft. In between these two seals is a chamber which houses the cooling fluid, or barrier fluid. The seals are actually cooled by recirculation pumps contained within the seals which pull cool liquid from the white reserve tank while also pumping hot liquid back out from the seals and into the reserve tank to be recooled.

Why EDDY Pumps Are Better – Highlights

This video shows how EDDY Pump outperforms centrifugal pumps when pumping high solids abrasive, viscous or corrosive slurries.