Green Transition and Sustainability
Sealing devices are a key driver to achieve a higher sustainability in industrial processes. Preventing leakage can be done with much different degrees of environmental efficiency.
Energy Saving
How would it feel if a car had to travel with its hand brake engaged?
That is what happens daily to rotating equipments using low technology sealing solution. Sealing devices absorb part of the energy developed by the pump motor, and turn it into heat through the friction of its parts.
Such heat, when excessive, can also require additional energy and water to be dissipated. Gland packings are known to absorb up to 10% of the total energy output of a pump motor, while for a balanced mechanical seal this value is typically around 1%. But is 1% low enough?
A mechanical seal using Sealtek diamond coating technology features a friction coefficient between 7 and 8 times lower than a conventional seal faces pairing like self-paired silicon carbide. Since the power absorption of a mechanical seal is directly proportional to its coefficient of friction, and a mechanical seal in an average application (not high speed and not high pressure) can easily absorb more than 200W, it can be calculated that the difference between a conventional seal and a diamond-coated seal would be something like 1 MWh per year, for one pump only.
At the same time, diamond seals keep a low friction and energy waste while still allowing as little leakage as possible, while for conventional seals the only way to keep friction within reasonable levels is to let more fluid through the seal faces, to keep them lubricated.
Water saving
Water is often used among different industries to dilute process fluids when they are so dense that they would otherwise be impossible to seal. This can be done with mechanical seals and packings alike.
The amount of water, which is often taken from fresh water sources like rivers and lakes, can be as high as 25 m³/hr. This would translate into about 200.000 m³/year, for one pump only.
Style 907, Sealtek’s newest patented model, is a solution to completely eliminate flush water usage in slurry applications: it is not about reducing this consumption to a certain degree, it’s about removing it completely without compromising the application’s success.
As a side effect, whenever flush water is eliminated, Style 907 also allows to save the energy previously used to inject such water.