Old timer down at the dock showed me a trick about slurry density last week

Was swapping out a cutterhead on the 12-inch barge when this guy who's been running dredges since the 70s walked over. He watched me check the flow and said I was chasing the wrong number, that I needed to pay more attention to the mud weight coming off the screen instead of just the pump rpm. I always thought you just cranked it until the line didn't clog, but he showed me how a consistent 1.25 specific gravity kept everything moving smoother with half the wear on the wear plates. We ran it his way for four hours and I gotta say, the discharge was way more even. Has anyone else found that tuning by density works better than just watching the pump speed?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby18923d ago

Oh yeah, I read an article last year in some dredging trade magazine that talked about this exact thing. They had a whole breakdown on how specific gravity is a way better indicator of what's actually moving through the line than just guessing based on pump speed. The gist was that the rpm can bounce around with different material types, but a steady mud weight means you're moving the same amount of solids no matter what. That old timer probably saved you a bunch of money on spare parts, those wear plates aren't cheap.

wendy_park7623d ago

I used to think pump speed told the whole story but you just totally changed my mind on that.