A slurry duty looks like a water duty with dirt in it. It is not. Solids concentration, particle size and specific gravity each change what the pump will actually do, and a selection made from a clean-water curve will miss the duty point on the day it is commissioned.
Head and efficiency both de-rate
Suspended solids reduce the head a centrifugal pump develops and the efficiency it reaches, and the reduction grows with particle size and concentration. The correction factors are well established, but they have to be applied — a 25% concentration of coarse tailings can take double-digit percentages off both.
Then there is the system side. Slurry pipelines have a deposition velocity: run below it and solids drop out, the line silts, and the friction head climbs until the pump is operating somewhere nobody designed for. The system curve for a slurry line is not the smooth parabola a water line gives you.
Wear is a design input, not a maintenance problem
Wear rate rises steeply with impeller tip speed — roughly with its cube for many materials. That is why a slurry pump is normally selected large and slow rather than small and fast, and why the drive is usually V-belt: the ratio can be trimmed on site when the ore changes.
Wet-end material follows the solids, not the budget:
- Natural rubber for fine, rounded, abrasive particles below roughly 5 mm, where its elasticity absorbs impact. It will not tolerate sharp edges, high temperature, or many hydrocarbons.
- High-chrome white iron (27% Cr) for coarse or angular solids, higher heads and temperatures rubber cannot take. It is hard and it is brittle, which is the trade.
- Polyurethane in a narrow band between the two, where fine abrasion meets some hydrocarbon exposure.
What we need from you
Solids concentration by weight, particle size distribution — the d50 and the top size — the specific gravity of the solids and of the carrier fluid, the pipeline length and static lift, and whether the duty runs continuously or in campaigns. With those we can de-rate the curve properly, set the speed for a sensible wear rate and tell you which wet-end material the service actually justifies.
Without them, any number we give you is a guess, and the rebuild interval is where you find that out.