Viking Pumps:
For the most critical applications in Petrochemicals
India: A Petrochemicals Hub
India is positioning itself as the world’s refining hub with 4th largest refining capacity in the world. It is also setting up world’s largest refinery cum petrochemical complex in the world by 2022. Along with this government’s policy of setting up PCPIR regions is encouraging investments in Petrochemical complexes. India is also planning to set up petrochemical complexes around all 22 refineries. This has led to a booming petrochemicals’ industry in India.
Challenge faced by customer:
Petrochemical Industries handle chemicals which are highly viscous, abrasive, flammable, corrosive etc. in nature and handling these liquids require heavy-duty pumps especially positive displacements pumps. One such petrochemical player in Tamil Nadu had requirement for reactor polyol transfer application in which the service liquid was a mixture of polyol with mixture of peroxide. The sticky nature of the polyol with around 5000 centimole viscosity made it difficult to transfer the liquid. The Customer was previously using twin screw pumps for handling this fluid and in spite of double mechanical seal design they were facing constant seal failure issues. Due to this there was high maintenance as the cost of replacing double mechanical seal in twin screw pumps is very high. The opening & cleaning of twin screw pump is also difficult due to two shafts being present which increased the downtime.
Viking’s Solution for the Customer:
To solve this problem the customer had initially decided to go for centrifugal pumps for this application. The issue with using these pumps was they couldn’t handle high viscosity of polyol especially when starting the pump. Viking proposed its N4327A from Universal Seal series with triple lip seal arrangement and standpipe buffer liquid arrangement. These pumps could easily handle the viscosity Viking convinced the customer about the technology & reliability of its gear pumps by showing successful results from Viking pumps for polyol application in various Petrochemical plants across India. This convinced the customer about the performance of the pumps, and they decided install this pump at their facility. The triple lip seal arrangement effectively provided 3 seals in 1 arrangement thereby solving the seal failure issue for the customer with long-lasting seal life. So even if one seal gets wore out the other two seals can prevent leak from the pump. It had unique visual leak detection system to easily identify when the seal needs to be replaced before the fluid comes out of the pump. The opening and installation of seals is also quick and easy in Viking’s universal seal series pumps. Since its inception in 1911 Viking has been an industry leader and at the forefront of innovation in pumps technology. To know more about Viking click on the link here