Hi, my name is Brooke, and I used to run the HR department in a factory. I filed a lot of injury reports and helped a tragic number of people make claims for workers' compensation or WorkCover. In many cases, the accidents involved convener belts. By seeing what not to do, I really learned what should be done in terms of conveyor safety. I love writing and wanted to convey some good will to the world through a blog – I also love puns. In this space, I plan to post on conveyor belt safety as well as other posts related to a range of industrial equipment. I hope these posts help to protect you and your workers.
Have you been incurring a high cost to replace the pump seals in your industrial equipment? Read on and find out some of the reasons that could explain those frequent pump seal failures. Use this information to make the needed changes in order to address the specific factors that were contributing to the pump seal failures in your equipment.
Use of Wrong Seals
Pump seals can fail prematurely because the wrong seals were selected for the application. For instance, you may have overlooked the seal flushing fluid that you use in your equipment when you want to clean your equipment. Such an error may have caused you to select seals that aren't resistant to the caustic cleaning fluid that you use during the process of flushing the seals. It is therefore vital to examine the entire scope of the challenges that the seals will be facing before you choose the material from which the ideal pump seals should be made.
Vibrations
Pump vibrations can also cause the seals to fail frequently. Those vibrations may result from several factors, such as the improper alignment of the pump or the pump may be imbalanced (due to trapped solid contaminants, for example). Such vibrations may exert a large mechanical force on the seals. The seals may eventually fail if the problem is not corrected in time.
Inadequate Seal Flushing
You should never start using a pump until you have a plan to flush the pump seal periodically. This is because you will need to remove contaminants that build up around the seal as the pump operates. A common cause of seal failure is the improper execution of a seal flushing procedure. That improper execution may involve the use of a limited amount of flushing fluid. The result of such an error is that not all the contaminants will be removed from the seal. Over time, the trapped contaminants will wear down the seal until it fails.
Operator Errors
Operator errors may also be responsible for the frequent seal failures that your pump experiences. The operator may not follow the proper start up steps, such as priming the pump. The result of such a mistake is that the seal could be irreparably damaged if the pump shaft twists during that improper start up.
As you can see, pump seal failures can be caused by a wide spectrum of factors. It may therefore be necessary to involve an expert in diagnosing what could be causing the pump seals of your equipment to fail if you cannot identify the cause from those discussed above.
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