Predictive maintenance as a means to improve the availability of centrifugal slurry pump at Ergo City deep plant

Centrifugal slurry pumps are used in many applications such as in the mining, chemical and in the industrial plants. Ergo City Deep Plant uses centrifugal slurry pumps to pump slurry from its pumping station to Elsburg pumping station over a distance of about 50 km. Due to unplanned breakdowns, the pumps are not operating at peak efficiency point, and as a result the plant does not meet its monthly production target. Ergo City Deep Plant used reactive (breakdown) maintenance, which had escalated the maintenance operating costs year on year. In this study, predictive maintenance through condition monitoring techniques was used to improve the availability of centrifugal slurry pump. This research proved that predictive maintenance is a better maintenance method for centrifugal slurry pumps than reactive maintenance, because the pumps availability increased by 49 %, the downtime and maintenance costs have also been reduced simultaneously by 58%. Furthermore, also production losses have been reduced, and therefore boosted the profit margin of the organization.