The Pumping of Slurry

Slurry pumping is one of the most demanding and frequently misunderstood areas of mineral process engineering. A system that performs well with water may experience blockage, excessive wear, cavitation, unstable operation or inadequate pump performance once solids are introduced.

The Pumping of Slurry: A Practitioner’s Handbook provides a practical and structured guide to the design, selection, operation and maintenance of slurry pumping systems used throughout the mineral-processing industry.

Written for process engineers, metallurgists, project engineers, plant operators, maintenance personnel and engineering students, the book explains how slurry properties, particle size, solids concentration, rheology, pipeline diameter, flow velocity and pump characteristics interact to determine system performance.

The handbook covers:

• Slurry concentration, density and particle-size distribution
• Settling and non-settling slurry behaviour
• Flow regimes and critical deposition velocity
• Pipeline sizing and friction-loss calculations
• Total Dynamic Head and system-curve development
• Centrifugal slurry pump selection and performance derating
• NPSH, cavitation and suction-system design
• Motor sizing, speed control and series or parallel pump arrangements
• Materials of construction, wear mechanisms and shaft sealing
• Sump, suction and discharge pipework design
• High-density tailings, paste and long-distance pipeline applications
• Installation, commissioning, operation and troubleshooting
• Maintenance strategy, reliability and life-cycle cost
• Complete pumping-system sizing workflows and worked examples

The book places particular emphasis on practical engineering judgement. Equations and empirical correlations are explained in context, their limitations are discussed, and the reader is shown how individual calculations combine into a complete pumping-system design.

A running mineral-processing case study is used to demonstrate the progression from mass balance and slurry characterisation through pipeline hydraulics, pump duty determination, motor selection and final equipment specification.

Whether used as a design reference, training resource or troubleshooting guide, The Pumping of Slurry helps practitioners develop systems that operate safely, reliably and efficiently while reducing energy consumption, maintenance requirements and premature equipment failure.