GIW Industries’ Slurry Loop demonstration provides visitors to the company’s booths at exhibitions a live close-up view of the slurry process that they could never witness in normal operations. The Slurry Loop, a portable pipe system modelled in clear plastic tubing, provides a way to see how the physics of particle transport works inside a slurry system. The next demonstration will be at the CIM 2015 Convention in Montreal, May 10-13.
GIW’s resident slurry pump expert Reab Berry usually conducts the demonstrations, which highlight three essential concepts of particle transportation in pipelines:
Small particle transport — Surprisingly, not large particles, but small particles the size of beach sand are the most difficult to pump.
Cyclone operation — In the clear loop, a miniature cyclone demonstrates how particle separation happens inside a slurry system.
Incline pipelines — In a moveable section of the model, visitors see how surging occurs in an inclined section of a pipeline.
The demonstration highlights essential concepts of particle transportation in pipelines.
Berry, who is an experienced trainer with more than 50 years in the industry, says “this demonstration has a high appeal to a wide variety of attendees, including customers, equipment representatives, potential customers, operators, plant managers, professors, consultants, a lot of students — and a few competitors.”
Providing an open forum for training and education is a core value of GIW Industries. Throughout its history, the company has offered formal training courses in slurry transport and pump maintenance, and regularly partners with universities and standards organizations to create documentation and train students. The company actively integrates training into all aspects of its customer service. And the GIW Hydraulic Lab is an internationally known research centre that continually brings the industry ground-breaking developments in computerised methods for pump selection and slurry wear analysis, and numerous advancements in slurry pump and pipeline technology.