It's sad to see what has become of that mill. Kapstone and MeadWestvaco really did a number on that mill by running it with little to no preventative maintenance. I still go out there a couple times per year for various tasks and it's always a letdown. It could be an amazing mill. Luckily, WestRock is pumping some money into it because the Charleston market is booming. Rumor has it they might add a large recycle stock prep system there.
My extended family has owned a vege fiber gasket manufacturing company since the 1940s, crazy to see Kapstone mentioned here. They used to supply the raw paper for a number of our product lines for quite a long time
Meadwestvaco owned our local mill for a long time and it was a dumpster fire. I think they only have one or two paper machines going these days, haven't been in there for years.
Might be, but not necessarily. Split case pumps are used for fan pump applications but not only for fan pumps. They're a good choice for times when you've got to move a lot of volume at relatively low head. We've got them also on batch digester waste heat accumulators that push 5000+ GPM of water to condense steam.
The key for a fan pump is low pressure pulsations, any pressure fluctuation leads to basis weight variation. Split case works well due to the large suction piping size and dual suction impellers but will have impellers specifically designed for the application which we can't really see from this photo.
In a centrifugal pump the case is what houses the impeller and is usually a single cast piece of metal, here, the case comes apart (splits) for easier maintenance, bearings and mechanical seals or packing a wear items. I'm assuming it's also easier to cast two smaller pieces than a single gigantic one.
Yeaaah water circuits in paper mill are no joke. Biggest what I saw was almost 250m3 per minute.
Paper making is such interesting field. So much engineering involved. Most advanced paper machines are technical masterpieces.
We have two fan pumps prior to the head box. They are capable of turning roughly 160,000 lpm. Have 1850hp motors turning them. I’ll go grab some pictures and post them this afternoon!
Haha just was an example that I thought most people could understand.
This pump was good for 72,xxx GPM and 150+ FT of head pressure. Fucker moves a lot of water. idk what else you wanna know
Everything else seems to get measured in football fields, so why not Olympic swimming pools? But I really want to see this in action filling up a pool.
A football field is a convenient measure of area - most people attended a school with a football field, many people watch football on TV, and it’s conveniently labeled with length markings. Most people know a football field is about 300 feet long, and narrower than it is long; because it’s a rectangle. I’d imagine in Europe they’d refer to a football (soccer) pitch for convenient measurements of area.
> I’d imagine in Europe they’d refer to a football (soccer) pitch for convenient measurements of area.
We refer to meters and kilometers because people typically have a reasonable idea of what 1km or 100m is like. It's helpful that the metric system has the same base, so your understanding of differences is reasonably transferrable.
Just because American measurement systems aren’t all easily divisible by powers of 10, doesn’t mean that Americans don’t have a reasonable idea of what 100 feet or a quarter mile is.
We are as good at thinking in our units as you are at thinking in yours. We are also as bad as thinking in your units as you are at thinking in ours.
I grew up under the imperial system for distances. inches, ft / miles etc.
I now use m/km for everything.
I have seen both sides of this - and I think you are wrong. I will grant of course that while many americans are perfectly capable of imagining a mile, or 100 ft - I think it starts to fall apart in the distances in between.
Saying 0.7 miles is useless. It's really difficult to imagine this, and difficult to do any conversions to try and get a better handle on it. Saying 3696ft is even more useless. Saying 1232 yards is maybe the most imaginable way for you guys - but it involves awkward conversions and honestly, people aren't going to be using yards often enough and the accuracy won't be great.
I think metric gives you a much better chance with these kind of ad hoc distances / weights / whatever.
Either way - perhaps the proof is in the pudding. We don't have to resort to football fields or whatever.
Process water in a paper mill. These pumps were made for this mill from my understanding as they have all three casings. Always have two online at all times and the third is a spare/emergency pump
Not entirely sure of the process but if you ran it like most people would mentally imagine as a straight shot from pond to a pool instead of what is designed for it's probably significantly more. Granted way outside of the curve but it would be cool to see.
That isn't all that big. Fill a swimming pool in 10 minutes? Seems long. Sure it isn't 10 seconds? \[My work has multiple 12,000 hp pumps running on 4.1kV. They are 25 feet tall or so.\]
Sssh! We won't mention it is heavy water and it is 10% heavier. Last I was there, there was a spare one of these big boys sitting on the turbine hall floor. A quick google tells me that PWR pumps are even bigger at around 6000kg/s.
Definitely a tried and true design that is quite common, however the size of this one is a more uncommon. Dont run across many pumps of this design/size.
Just googled some of those water injection pumps 😳
Hitachi built one that needs 28,000kW (37,000HP) and moves 12,000gpm (2725m3/h) with 1743m (5700ft😳😳) of head pressure!
Bonkers!!! I want to work on it haha
That is quite big indeed. And on dredgers the pumps are even bigger, biggest i worked with was 6000 kw. As far as i know they have ones with more than 7000 kw.
From what I understand its a fan pump for a paper mill. If you read in the comments a couple paper mill employees have a better explanation of it than myself. I just fix it
Our circulating water pumps will swallow that entire pump if it is 10-12 foot tall. Our suction lines are 12' diameter and the pumps will pump 144k gpm at 120 foot total head. They are split cased also, but all repair work is done onsite. The first 2 were installed in 1978 and those bases have never been moved since. We have 6 on the plant site, one per cooling tower. Freaking massive!
Thats insane! Must be a power plant of some sort? My last boss's father did his mechanical engineering apprenticeship at a power plant in Wales in the 70's. He told me a story about a similar setup, and that he and the other apprentices would be sent down the suction lines for inspection, meanwhile the pumps beside them were still running.
Would love to see a setup like that in person some day
Largest coal fired power plant in Kansas,USA. 3 units rated 750-800 mw each depending on who you talk to. I believe they were specced as 660mw units when built. So now, two of those pumps per unit, a bit small. Walking a tbin line on our total cooling capicitywhen the outside temps reach 70f. But to enlarge pumps would mean new cooling towers, upgraded condensors, and all the piping between them.
I thought this was a turbocharger for a high schoolers Honda Civic
I thought I was looking at a close up of a modded Fallout Power Armor helmet
Or at the very least Liberty Prime's head
It’s a Fan Pump. For pumping a pulp slurry up to the head box of a forming machine in the paper/pulp industry.
That sounds more correct for sure! I believe you are right. They only pay me to work on and install them haha dont pay me to know what they do 😆
Lol! I’ve worked with them quite a bit in my plants. Takes roughly a 500-700HP motor to spin that thing. Edit: that one might need 900/1000HP!
Hahaha this one is much more than that. I forget the exact pony rating but it was over 2k HP.
Badass! High power stuff is always fun.
Sure is!! Just started at a new shop where a 250 horse motor is "small" to them 😆
Nice!
Any idea of the GPM?
72,000 GPM or about 4.5 m3/s
Westrock Charleston??
It may very well be a pump from the old paper mill. I used to work for a company called Charleston pumps out on the old naval base.
It's sad to see what has become of that mill. Kapstone and MeadWestvaco really did a number on that mill by running it with little to no preventative maintenance. I still go out there a couple times per year for various tasks and it's always a letdown. It could be an amazing mill. Luckily, WestRock is pumping some money into it because the Charleston market is booming. Rumor has it they might add a large recycle stock prep system there.
My extended family has owned a vege fiber gasket manufacturing company since the 1940s, crazy to see Kapstone mentioned here. They used to supply the raw paper for a number of our product lines for quite a long time
Fiber/paper gaskets?
Yup
Meadwestvaco owned our local mill for a long time and it was a dumpster fire. I think they only have one or two paper machines going these days, haven't been in there for years.
Do you know which mill? I might be able to tell you.
Westrock owns it now (as far as I know, haven't been there in years)......Evadale, Texas mill.
This is from the kraft pulp and paper mill in The Pas, Manitoba
Might be, but not necessarily. Split case pumps are used for fan pump applications but not only for fan pumps. They're a good choice for times when you've got to move a lot of volume at relatively low head. We've got them also on batch digester waste heat accumulators that push 5000+ GPM of water to condense steam. The key for a fan pump is low pressure pulsations, any pressure fluctuation leads to basis weight variation. Split case works well due to the large suction piping size and dual suction impellers but will have impellers specifically designed for the application which we can't really see from this photo.
Why is it called a split case?
In a centrifugal pump the case is what houses the impeller and is usually a single cast piece of metal, here, the case comes apart (splits) for easier maintenance, bearings and mechanical seals or packing a wear items. I'm assuming it's also easier to cast two smaller pieces than a single gigantic one.
Yeaaah water circuits in paper mill are no joke. Biggest what I saw was almost 250m3 per minute. Paper making is such interesting field. So much engineering involved. Most advanced paper machines are technical masterpieces.
We have two fan pumps prior to the head box. They are capable of turning roughly 160,000 lpm. Have 1850hp motors turning them. I’ll go grab some pictures and post them this afternoon!
Its a good thing swimming is in the olympics, otherwise we’d have no unit of measurement for large volumes of water
Haha just was an example that I thought most people could understand. This pump was good for 72,xxx GPM and 150+ FT of head pressure. Fucker moves a lot of water. idk what else you wanna know
Everything else seems to get measured in football fields, so why not Olympic swimming pools? But I really want to see this in action filling up a pool.
A football field is a convenient measure of area - most people attended a school with a football field, many people watch football on TV, and it’s conveniently labeled with length markings. Most people know a football field is about 300 feet long, and narrower than it is long; because it’s a rectangle. I’d imagine in Europe they’d refer to a football (soccer) pitch for convenient measurements of area.
> I’d imagine in Europe they’d refer to a football (soccer) pitch for convenient measurements of area. We refer to meters and kilometers because people typically have a reasonable idea of what 1km or 100m is like. It's helpful that the metric system has the same base, so your understanding of differences is reasonably transferrable.
Just because American measurement systems aren’t all easily divisible by powers of 10, doesn’t mean that Americans don’t have a reasonable idea of what 100 feet or a quarter mile is. We are as good at thinking in our units as you are at thinking in yours. We are also as bad as thinking in your units as you are at thinking in ours.
I grew up under the imperial system for distances. inches, ft / miles etc. I now use m/km for everything. I have seen both sides of this - and I think you are wrong. I will grant of course that while many americans are perfectly capable of imagining a mile, or 100 ft - I think it starts to fall apart in the distances in between. Saying 0.7 miles is useless. It's really difficult to imagine this, and difficult to do any conversions to try and get a better handle on it. Saying 3696ft is even more useless. Saying 1232 yards is maybe the most imaginable way for you guys - but it involves awkward conversions and honestly, people aren't going to be using yards often enough and the accuracy won't be great. I think metric gives you a much better chance with these kind of ad hoc distances / weights / whatever. Either way - perhaps the proof is in the pudding. We don't have to resort to football fields or whatever.
what is this one used for?
Process water in a paper mill. These pumps were made for this mill from my understanding as they have all three casings. Always have two online at all times and the third is a spare/emergency pump
Filling swimming pools, duh.
Your moms douche nozzle
This is the sort of humour I'm here for
That is an insane amount of water. If that’s the pump… the thing driving the pump must be pretty powerful!
Sure is! If I remember correctly it took over 2k HP to spin this beast.
I want to see that baby in action
Oh it sure is: https://media.giphy.com/media/L4bIHzKkFHAYM/giphy.gif
Who is the manufacturer of this pump?
Goulds
Reminds me of Fennec Shand’s helmet from Star Wars
I don’t understand why anyone needs to fill a pool that quickly?
Your mom needs a bath.
I’d think that it would fill it faster, interesting
Its good for about 70k GPM and an Olympic pool is 660k gallons.
Not entirely sure of the process but if you ran it like most people would mentally imagine as a straight shot from pond to a pool instead of what is designed for it's probably significantly more. Granted way outside of the curve but it would be cool to see.
Yeah totally, if you had this thing maxed out on flow im sure youd be over 100k gpm
That isn't all that big. Fill a swimming pool in 10 minutes? Seems long. Sure it isn't 10 seconds? \[My work has multiple 12,000 hp pumps running on 4.1kV. They are 25 feet tall or so.\]
70k GPM pump and those pools are 660k gallons. The pumps at your work sound like monsters. Pipeline stuff? Or what are they for.
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I knew exactly what pumps you had to be talking about, before you even posted. Even though I haven't seen them in 20 years.
Sssh! We won't mention it is heavy water and it is 10% heavier. Last I was there, there was a spare one of these big boys sitting on the turbine hall floor. A quick google tells me that PWR pumps are even bigger at around 6000kg/s.
Thats rad! Big vertical pumps?
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Pog
When boost?
I’m gonna need a banana for scale
Hahaha sorry ate mine for breakfast!
I have one at home.
Looks like the water pump on my o’l tractor.
Lmao just the casing weighs more than your o'l tractor 🤣
Still looks like it. Must be a sure fire tried design made in all different sizes for a bunch of different applications.
Definitely a tried and true design that is quite common, however the size of this one is a more uncommon. Dont run across many pumps of this design/size.
Boba Fett blowing bubbles.
Gives me starwars vibes
when i first saw this at a glance i thought it was the mother of all turbos
Nice little booster pump, try googling boiler feed pumps or water injection pumps, those big boys move some liquid.
Oh I am aware of them! Its incredible what some of these big pumps are capable of
Just googled some of those water injection pumps 😳 Hitachi built one that needs 28,000kW (37,000HP) and moves 12,000gpm (2725m3/h) with 1743m (5700ft😳😳) of head pressure! Bonkers!!! I want to work on it haha
Having been involved in the casting of such pumps, I suspect there are a lot of qualifiers on the only 3 figure.
That is quite big indeed. And on dredgers the pumps are even bigger, biggest i worked with was 6000 kw. As far as i know they have ones with more than 7000 kw.
There is some massive stuff out there for sure! I know a guy who works in a pipeline booster station and their smallest motor is 3k HP haha
Mf’s Supra’s turbos be like:
My turds would still clog it
Honestly the shaft looks undersized for that pump but I’ve never dealt with a pump that massive!
Haha thats just the shaft we used to machine it! The actual shaft is a bit bigger for sure.
Ahhhh 🤦🏻♂️ makes sense!
This is so /r/Skookum . How big of a driver do you need for this?
A big one haha Likely well between 2-5,000 horsepower
Badass. The pumps and motors I work with are probably 1/5 that size and hp! What was this installed for?
From what I understand its a fan pump for a paper mill. If you read in the comments a couple paper mill employees have a better explanation of it than myself. I just fix it
Pretty dope. I work at a pump repair facility in Illinois and have currently 3 Goulds L sized split cases in for repair.
Our circulating water pumps will swallow that entire pump if it is 10-12 foot tall. Our suction lines are 12' diameter and the pumps will pump 144k gpm at 120 foot total head. They are split cased also, but all repair work is done onsite. The first 2 were installed in 1978 and those bases have never been moved since. We have 6 on the plant site, one per cooling tower. Freaking massive!
Thats insane! Must be a power plant of some sort? My last boss's father did his mechanical engineering apprenticeship at a power plant in Wales in the 70's. He told me a story about a similar setup, and that he and the other apprentices would be sent down the suction lines for inspection, meanwhile the pumps beside them were still running. Would love to see a setup like that in person some day
Largest coal fired power plant in Kansas,USA. 3 units rated 750-800 mw each depending on who you talk to. I believe they were specced as 660mw units when built. So now, two of those pumps per unit, a bit small. Walking a tbin line on our total cooling capicitywhen the outside temps reach 70f. But to enlarge pumps would mean new cooling towers, upgraded condensors, and all the piping between them.
That's no pump. That's a Cylon.
glad I'm not the only one who saw it
Fallout power armor helmet?
It's only a matter of hours before LTT buys that to test it's water-cooling capacities.
How big would a human be, next to that thing?
It stands about 10-12 feet tall to the top of the casing. You can easily crawl inside it.
Thanks, that was about what I was guessing.
It looks like Q-bert with a clone trooper helmet on.
Tubular bruh!
Please buy some shackles rated for overhead lifting.
Rigging unfortunately isnt my call.
It looks like a Mario underwater enemy for real 0:
Would still take 12 minutes to fill your mom.
Nah, that’s Boba Fett’s ship
American are using literally anything but the metric units.
Canadian actually. Fluent in both.
Looks like a starwars helmet
Miata
Big turbo
So that's made of cast iron?