MechChem Africa November-December 2024

The WARMAN ® MCR ® 650: a benchmark mill circuit pump

At Electra Mining Africa during September, Marnus Koorts of Weir took MechChem Africa through the advanced features of Weir’s WARMAN ® large severe duty MCR ® 650 slurry pump, highlighting the built-in design technology of the whole mill circuit (MC) range and the help available to mine operators in getting the best performance, uptime, flexibility and life from their mill circuits. “W hile there are a lot of companies that now manufacture slurry pumps, not everyone Africa. Weir, he adds, also has several of the world’s largest mill pump, the WARMAN ® MCR ® 760 mill circuit pump, in operation at mine sites around the world.

“The size of mills and their associated mill circuit pumps has been getting bigger and bigger in recent years,” he says. Summarising the WARMAN ® MC pump range, he says that the MCR ® model is a rub ber lined mill circuit pump, while the MCU ® is an unlined pump made from high-chrome

can successfully offer pumps with a dis charge bigger than 350 mm. Here at Electra Mining Africa, we are showcasing our MCR 650 pump, which is specifically tailored to meeting the discharge needs of today’s very large ball- and SAG-mills, “ begins Marnus Koorts, GM for pump products at Weir in

Marnus Koorts, General Manager, Pump Products for Weir.

white iron. “The rubber liners in our MCR pumps can be swapped with metal liners, which is what we denote as our MCR-M pumps. This gives us another level of flex ibility when it comes to meeting the specific needs of a particular mining operation and ore body,” Marnus Koorts tells MechChem Africa . Pointing towards the MCR ® 650 pump on show, he says that these weigh 40 t. “If for any reason, the lining material needs to be changed, it’s a huge job to move a pump of that size,” he notes. He adds that Weir has the widest range of metal and rubber lining materials, even for very large pumps such as these. “On the MCR-M pump, we have the flexibility to change the material from one of our rubber compositions to any one of our metal compositions, and we can even make the throatbush, the impeller and volute liners from different materials so as to optimise the wear life in different parts of a pump,” he informs MechChem Africa . “Optimising the wear linings of one of these severe duty large pumps is much more complex than people think. A rubber liner might work quite nicely at first, but after time might need to be changed.” “We have developed advanced elastomer (rubber) technologies and hypereutectic alloy (metal) technologies that allow us to offer the largest range of material options and combinations. Using wear evaluation software, we have also come up with unique designs that deliver superior reliability, per formance and wear life,” he assures. Simplifying the on-site changing of a pump’s liners to a preferred combination, Weir’s design of the WARMAN ® MC range enables the whole of the clam shell – with all of the wet-end components, including the liners and impeller – to be removed

The Warman MCR 650 on display at the Electra Mining Africa exhibition, specifically tailored to meet the discharge needs of large ball and SAG mills.

20 ¦ MechChem Africa • November-December 2024