Real Desalination Projects: Plan 32, Cyclone Separators and High-Pressure Pump Seals

The reference projects announced by EagleBurgmann show how sealing is done in practice at some desalination plants around the world.

Some examples

• The Tuaspring plant has a capacity of 318,500 cubic meters of drinking water per day, described as the largest in Southeast Asia, using many Sulzer submersible pumps to draw seawater.
• The La Caleta plant in Tenerife, Spain, produces 10,000 cubic meters per day, meeting about 40% of the demand of the surrounding communities. Five Sulzer ZF-200 high-pressure booster pumps use SHV seals, with a seal chamber pressure of 55 bar and a speed of 1,679 rpm.
• The Sur plant in Oman uses multi-stage high-pressure pumps for the reverse osmosis process, sealed with SHV2 seals.

Two notable auxiliary techniques

• Cartex-QN cartridge seals according to Plan 32 (supplying clean fluid from the outside) for pumps working with contaminated water.
• Cyclone separator in Plan 11 to remove sand from the fluid stream to the seal when the water is sandy.

Lessons

Choosing the right auxiliary scheme according to actual conditions (sand, pressure, speed) is no less important than choosing the seal itself.

References

EagleBurgmann's reference project page. Data published by the company. The article was compiled and reinterpreted by SNS-VN; brand names belong to their owners.