RTF 4 Agitator - Eliminates Downtime in Carbon in Pulp Circuit

The great bulk of agitated tanks in the mineral processing industry are top entry applications which utilize a flow pattern that pumps down through the middle of the tank and up around the edges. Axial flow impellers are used to create this flow pattern along with baffles in the tank.

A United States based customer reported they were tripping motors due to overload of the in-tank agitator in their carbon in pulp process.

The CPE RTF4 blade is slim at the tip where the speed is greatest and wider at the base where the speed is lowest. This shape results in uniform flow across the impeller diameter. The twist in the RTF4 blade is evenly decreasing  from the inner hub out toward the tip. The twist is carefully proportioned to avoid turbulence anywhere on the blade. Using this technology, we are able to provide additional pumping (meaning better solids suspension) at the same power, or provide the same pumping with less power usage. In this case, we were looking to lower the power draw to keep the agitator motors from tripping.

As you can see, the customer was extremely happy as we were able to reduce the power draw and eliminate the agitator motor from tripping. This allowed the customer to keep agitators running and reduce downtime. Subsequently, the customer used a thermal imaging camera to audit the tanks and found consistent temps in the tanks retrofitted vs temperature variances in the original agitator tanks. This indicated that not only was the RTF drawing less power, but we were getting more consistent mixing even though the calcs indicated similar values.