Tag Archives: peristaltic pumps

Watson-Marlow pumps perform at Cornish Lithium Shallow Geothermal Test Site

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Five 500 series cased peristaltic pumps from Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions are playing an important role in a demonstration plant at Cornish Lithium’s Shallow Geothermal Test Site in the UK.

Originally built to test the concept of extracting lithium from geothermal waters, Cornish Lithium is now working on an upgraded version of the test plant as its drilling program expands, ultimately with the aim of developing an efficient, sustainable and cost-effective lithium extraction supply chain.

The initial enquiry for pumps came from GeoCubed, a joint venture between Cornish Lithium and Geothermal Engineering Ltd (GEL). GEL owns a deep borehole site at United Downs in Cornwall where plans are in place to commission a £4 million ($5.2 million) pilot plant.

“GeoCubed’s process engineers helped us to design and commission the test plant ahead of the G7, which would run on shallow geothermal waters extracted from Cornish Lithium’s own research boreholes,” Dr Rebecca Paisley, Exploration Geochemist at Cornish Lithium, said.

Adam Matthews, Exploration Geologist at Cornish Lithium, added: “Our shallow site centres on a borehole that we drilled in 2019. A special borehole pump [not Watson-Marlow] extracts the geothermal water [mildly saline, lithium-enriched water] and feeds into the demonstration processing plant.”

The five Watson-Marlow 530SN/R2 pumps serve two different parts of the test plant, the first of which extracts lithium from the waters by pumping the brine from a container up through a column containing a large number of beads.

“The beads have an active ingredient on their surface that is selective for lithium,” Paisley explained. “As water is pumped through the column, lithium ions attach to the beads. With the lithium separated, we use two Watson-Marlow 530s to pump an acidic solution in various concentrations through the column. The acid serves to remove lithium from the beads, which we then transfer to a separate container.

“The pumps are peristaltic, so nothing but the tube comes into contact with the acid solution.”

She added: “We’re using the remaining 530 series pumps to help understand what other by-products we can make from the water. For instance, we can reuse the water for secondary processes in industry and agriculture. For this reason, we have two other columns working in unison to strip all other elements from the water as we pump it through.”

According to Matthews, flow rate was among the primary reasons for selecting Watson-Marlow pumps.

“The column needed a flow rate of 1-2 litres per minute to fit with our test scale, so the 530 pumps were ideal,” he says. “The other consideration was choosing between manual or automated pumps. At the time, because it was bench scale, we went for manual, as we knew it would be easy to make adjustments while we were still experimenting with process parameters. However, any future commercial lithium extraction system would of course take advantage of full automation.

Paisley added: “The great thing about having these five pumps is that we can use them to help evaluate other technologies moving forward. Lithium extraction from the type of waters we find in Cornwall is not undertaken anywhere else in the world on any scale – the water chemistry here is unique.

“It is really important for us to undertake on-site test work with a variety of different companies and technologies. We want to devise the most environmentally responsible solution using the optimum lithium recovery method, at the lowest possible operating cost. Using local companies is part of our strategy, particularly as continuity of supply is vital.”

To help fulfil the requirements of the next test plant, Cornish Lithium has enquired after more 530SN/R2 pumps from Watson-Marlow.

“We’ve also requested a quote for a Qdos 120 dosing pump from Watson-Marlow, so we can add a certain amount of acid into the system and achieve pH balance,” Matthews says. “We’ll be doing more drilling in the coming 12 months, which will allow us to test our technology on multiple sites.”

Watson-Marlow breaks ground on new US facility

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Watson-Marlow has announced the ground breaking of its new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Devens, Massachusetts, in the US.

A celebration ceremony was held on November 18 at the new facility, which will be dedicated to Watson-Marlow’s range of industry leading products, including peristaltic pumps, tubing, fluid path solutions and BioPure components.

The Devens 14,000 sq.m facility will be close to the life sciences hub in the Cambridge/Boston area, with the site incorporating a suite of eight ISO14644-1 Class 7 cleanrooms, warehousing and offices, with space for two further cleanrooms within the initial footprint.

With segregated cleanroom and non-cleanroom production capabilities, Watson-Marlow’s new facility will strengthen the support the company provides to customers in the region across its core sectors of pharmaceutical and biotechnology, medical diagnostics and process industries, the company said.

“The new US facility is an important milestone in the Watson-Marlow company history and marks a significant commitment to serving our customers in the Americas region,” Andrew Mines, Watson-Marlow Managing Director, said. “This exciting development is bringing us closer to our customers whose purpose is to help the world around us, from advancing cell and gene therapies through to ensuring people have access to clean drinking water. Together we will continue to develop market-leading fluid management solutions to engineer a more sustainable future.”

Production at the new facility will replicate that of Watson-Marlow’s European sites, ensuring continued product quality for customers, by using the same raw materials, components, processes and work instructions. Completion of the facility is due in late 2022, with the first products due to be shipped from the site late in the December quarter.

Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group releases Bredel heavy-duty hose pumps

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Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group (WMFTG) has released a new peristaltic design of Bredel hose pumps that, the company says, can handle viscous slurries, grit-filled sludge corrosive acids and other challenging materials.

These qualities of the Bredel heavy-duty hose pumps make them ideal for the most demanding mining applications, according to the company.

“Unlike diaphragm, rotary lobe, and PC pumps, the peristaltic design of Bredel hose pumps contains no moving parts that come into contact with the product, and no seals, ball-checks, diaphragms, glands, immersed rotors, stators or pistons to leak, clog, corrode or replace,” it said. “Bredel hose pumps also obviate the need for ancillary equipment such as dry run protection, seal water flush systems and in-line check valves. A simple hose change takes only minutes and can be performed in-situ without special tools or skilled personnel.”

The low maintenance peristaltic design offers a low total cost of ownership, WMFTG claims. As the fluid is safely contained within the hose or tube, operation and maintenance personnel and the environment are protected from unwanted spillages or exposure to chemicals.

Bredel hose pumps are dry-running and self-priming, and allow no slippage, for true positive displacement to provide accurate and repeatable metering, the company says. Only Bredel industrial hose pumps provide this level of engineering expertise for their drives, according to WMFTG.

The pumped fluid is completely contained in a long-life hose, protecting operation and maintenance personnel and the environment from unwanted spillages or exposure to chemicals. Flow is entirely independent of suction and discharge conditions.

Every Bredel hose is precision machined to ensure flow stability and pump performance in tough fluid handling applications, the company added.

These industrial pumps achieve flow rates up to 475 gallons per minute (1,798 litres/min), transferring up to 80% solids in suspension.

Harte Gold goes with the Watson-Marlow flow at Sugar Zone

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Harte Gold’s wholly-owned Sugar Zone Mine in Ontario, Canada, is now benefiting from the adoption of Qdos and APEX peristaltic pumps from Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group (WMFTG).

Having deployed the pumps in two important applications, the Sugar Zone team are now enjoying far better flow rate efficiency, along with significant reductions in both maintenance requirements and downtime, according to WMFTG, with the miner subsequently looking to invest further in the company’s pumping technology.

The Sugar Zone Mine entered commercial production in 2019 and has an anticipated operating life of around 13 years at current output levels. Producing 60,000-65,000 oz/y of gold at a 800 t/d throughput rate, a mine expansion study is currently in progress to support a 1,200 t/d rate.

In the reagents room, Harte Gold operates eight diaphragm pumps on a 24/7 basis. However, issues over insufficient process efficiency, the amount of maintenance time needed to replace diaphragms and the potential for leaks prompted the company to look at alternative solutions.

Harte Gold invited WMFTG to trial its Qdos 30 chemical metering pump. For a period of one month, the mining company compared the Qdos with an existing electric diaphragm pump dosing flotation reagents such as potassium amyl xanthate (PAX).

With a flow rate for PAX of 100-300 ml/min, the Qdos 30 significantly outperformed the diaphragm pump on flow rate efficiency, according to WMFTG. Although the dosage rates were adjusted as required before and during the trial, the Qdos outputs were noticeably more consistent in comparison with the existing pump, bringing potential for process optimisation.

ReNu peristaltic pump head technology is at the core of the Qdos pump and is key to its success at Harte Gold, WMFTG says. ReNu ensures accurate and repeatable chemical dosing and, thanks to its contained design with integral leak detection, reduces wastage and eliminates any potential for operator exposure to chemicals.

In addition, Harte Gold personnel confirmed both operations and maintenance were trouble-free during the trial runs. Indeed, there were favourable reports of the colour TFT display, which shows both flow and speed, while the maintenance team was in full support of the single, no tools ReNu pump head replacement.

Such was the success of the trial that Harte Gold is now looking to gradually phase-out all eight of its existing diaphragm pumps in the reagents room over the coming few months. Although control of the first Qdos 30 on site is manual, the company will adopt 4-20 mA I/O moving forward, according to WMFTG. Harte Gold is also planning to replace diaphragm pumps with Qdos models on the water treatment side of its business.

In another area of its operations, Harte Gold has replaced an existing peristaltic pump (not Watson-Marlow) with an APEX 35 in a 24/7 application. Here, the pump transfers thickened gravity concentrate from a gold decanting tank to a shaker table. However, the company found itself replacing hoses every week in its existing peristaltic pump.

The company already had an APEX 35 in operation so thought the same model would provide a good solution for the thickened gravity concentrate. Instead of the one week hose life previously achieved, the APEX 35 with NR hose lasted for 12 weeks, reducing both maintenance and downtime in this critical application. Now, only four hoses are required per year, rather than 52, equating to a 1,200%-plus gain in maintenance intervals, the company said.