Protect Your Pump and Keep It Longer

In today's complex and frequently rugged process plant environments, liquid pumps are often over-worked and under-protected from adverse operating conditions. Many pumps run nearly non-stop 24-hours a day over multiple shifts. Poor operating conditions can reduce pump performance, require extra maintenance, shorten their lives and increase costs. Unexpectedly losing a pump is often an expensive or even a dangerous problem in a chemical plant. The results of a pump failure potentially range from the loss of product in sensitive pharmaceutical batch control applications to damage to other nearby equipment from pressure build-up of material that isn't moving or even to safety hazards when a pump fails to shut-down and literally burns-up in the presence of combustible materials. It really pays to protect and care properly for your pumps. Two of the more common problems that can negatively affect pumps are wet/dry conditions and flow disturbances-both of which are preventable. Nothing can damage a liquid pump faster than the build-up of heat from dry running conditions, which occurs when liquid stops flowing into the line or the pump. When the liquid isn't there to provide cooling, the heat can destroy a pump's bearings. If repair is even possible, it is going to be a very expensive proposition.