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  • Water Cooled Pump Seal Issue

    Hey all, question for you.

    We have a Chinese sourced pump that circulates the glycol from the glycol reservoir to the chiller. The seal failed on it a few months ago and we had it replaced. It ran for almost four years without an issue. Now since the seal has been replaced, it failed in three months and dumped a bunch of glycol.

    This is a water cooled pump that we have never had water on due to the fact that it is already cold from the glycol. The pump repair man now wants to circulate glycol in a loop through the pump cooling chamber. He wants me to create a loop where the pump water chamber is filled with glycol but tapping into the face (in) of the pump, and tapping into the out of the pump.

    I have some concerns with that.

    1)Can that chamber handle the pressure that the pump generates? My question there lies in the fact that when we run water through it, there is little to no pressure on that chamber.

    2) will I be introducing particulate from the pump loop into the glycol system as a whole, especially as that seal wears?

    3) The logistics of tapping into that pump face is daunting as we do not have any additional space to extend the pump connections to the rest of the system.

    Let me know your thoughts.

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    Thanks: Mills

  • #2
    Hooking up a flush on your seal

    I generally agree except you should not need to flush a glycol pump seal (evidenced by the fact that the original last 4 years) so I would take a good long look at the replacement seal and see why it failed. I would suspect wrong elastomers or a poor installation. Does this pump have a replaceable seal seat? If so, was it replaced, if not was the backing plate refaced? This could be your cause of failure.

    If you decide to add a flush to your seal (not necessary IMHO) I would not tap in to the pump casing. You only need a 1/4" line so you should be able to tap into the outlet piping with a 1/4" coupling somewhere and then back in to the suction piping again with a 1/4" coupling. Like Marcus said add a needle valve to the line coming from the outlet of the pump and I would also add a pressure gauge so you can adjust the seal pressure to about 5 psi.

    Another possibility is to add a static flush like you use when pumping chocolate. You can't flush a chocolate seal with water (water and chocolate don't mix) so you set up a static flush with with mineral oil. You could do this with a small amount of glycol. You take a small tank (read old 1/4 keg) and mount it above the seal. Tap into the keg and run 1/4" lines to the seal on your pump. Fill the keg with glycol and that is all there is to it. I have attached a coupe of pictures so you can DIY it.

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