How to choose mechanical seals for high-temperature heavy oil pumps

17/01/2022
For the petrochemical industry, selection of mechanical seals for high-temperature heavy oil pumps has always been a major problem, such as for catalytic cracking slurry pumps, recycle oil refining pumps, atmospheric tower bottom pumps, primary distillation tower bottom pumps, vacuum tower bottom pumps, Radiation feed pump for delayed coking, etc.

Medium of high temperature heavy oil pump has the following common characteristics from which you can see it is impossible to choose common mechanical seals :
High temperature: generally 340~400℃;
Medium viscosity is large: general kinematic viscosity at temperature is (12~180)×10-6m/s;
Medium has particles: such as catalyst, coke, sand and other impurities.

In the petrochemical industry,all companies now adopt welded metal bellow mechanical seals for high-temperature heavy oil pumps. DBM type, XL-604/606/609 type, YH-604/606/609 type and so on are in better use now. The bellows material adopts corrosion-resistant high-temperature alloys, stainless steel such as AM350, INCONEL718, Hastelloy B, C, etc.; some wave plates adopt a double-layer structure to increase bearing pressure from 2MPa to 5MPa, which effectively solves the elasticity loss problem of the bellows.