Bochum-based Habermann Aurum Pumpen GmbH was founded in 1927, as mining in Germany peaked and the Ruhr area, where the company has been based since those early years, became a major industrial hub and one of the world’s leading mining regions. The company will be exhibiting at MINExpo this year from September 24-26 in Las Vegas in West Hall, Booth 10603.
Over the years, it says it has gathered valuable knowledge from the mining sector and tunneling construction and developed robust pumping solutions, designed to endure even the most abrasive applications and ensure reliable performance in the toughest mining environments.
Continuous operation under harsh and unforeseen conditions accelerates the wear of mechanical components in pumps. Slurry pumps have sliding wear not only due to very fine solids but also due to high proportion of coarse particles. They must handle abrasive slurries with coarse-grained solids, which cause significant wear on pump components. Additionally, the corrosive nature of certain ores and chemicals used in processing can further deteriorate pump materials.
Habermann Aurum Pumpen designs heavy-duty KBKT-series centrifugal pumps from highly wear-resistant high chrome steel to withstand these harsh conditions. These pumps handle a wide range of solid sizes, from the finest grains to coarse particles up to 250 mm, ensuring reliable and efficient performance. “The KBKT-series features strong wall thicknesses for impellers, housings and wear plates. A crucial factor for reliable solids transport is maintaining a minimum flow speed to prevent sedimentation, which is determined by the sinking rate of the solids. This rate depends on the mineral weight, grain size, grain shape and transport concentration. For coarse grains, it’s essential to ensure that the maximum grain size does not exceed half the pipe diameter.”
In chemical processing within mining, pumps are essential for handling various reagents and chemical slurries used in the extraction and processing of minerals. Here, pumps must be resistant to chemical corrosion and capable of handling a wide range of fluid viscosities and densities. The HPK-series pumps, with their elastic linings, it says are particularly suited for such environments, providing excellent chemical resistance and durability.
Reliable pumping equipment can also be a decisive success factor in many underground infrastructure projects involving water and energy supply, as well as water removal and microtunnelling. The powerful and highly wear-resistant pumps from the KB- and NPW-series feature a compact design, tailor-made for delivery or feed operations under the confined installation conditions of microtunnelling and pipe jacking. Low construction heights, highly wear-resistant materials, and shaft seals with either an expeller or our self-developed mechanical seal, HGD, ensure safe use in AVN jacking systems.
This series has tunnel versions for microtunnelling, where space is limited, and shaft versions as feed or booster pumps from the shaft to the separation plant. The shaft versions are more commonly used for larger pipe jacking dimensions, with variably adjustable discharge nozzle settings within technical limits. A high-performance separation plant is a critical component for processing bentonite slurry enriched with sand and solids, ensuring high pipe jacking performance on construction sites for traffic and supply tunnels, and in specialized civil engineering projects. The fine and coarse-grained soil components in the pumping circuit demand exceptional wear resistance from the materials used.