Massive savings on mixer maintenance and downtime

Comparing dry-well sealed mixers with lip-seal mixers for a recent chemical process installation, Chemineer demonstrated how savings of almost GBP70k could be made on maintenance costs over 10 years

Comparing dry-well sealed mixers with lip-seal mixers for a recent chemical process installation at a major plant, Chemineer demonstrated how savings of almost GBP70,000 could be made on maintenance costs over 10 years.

The higher initial cost option was given by Chemineer for a fully-engineered, purpose-built GT style mixer, which gives long-term benefits over its life cycle, especially as the site is intended to run with minimal maintenance, and a lower lifetime cost.

No maintenance is required for the dry-well oil seal on the GT, whereas a lip-seal system, as supplied in most proprietary gearboxes, will have a limited wear life of just two or a maximum five years.

During this time, the seal will start to weep oil, leading to inevitable replacement.

The additional maintenance and downtime clearly adds a significant cost and a considerable on-going hassle-factor over the full-expected lifetime of the product.

Based on a 10-year calculation, Chemineer found that servicing costs would be GBP7,000 for the weakest component of a GT Mixer dry-well seal gear unit (treating a bearing failure).

Based on the same formula and the same time duration of 10 years, for cheaper, lip-sealed gearboxes, the servicing of lip-seal wear (the weakest component here) would cost GBP73,000.

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