Gear Pumps vs. NEMO® NM090 pump

Making an impromptu visit to a local paper mill in Southeastern Pennsylvania, one of our distributors decided that he would stop in and see if the gear pumps that this company was currently using were operating to their expectations.  Prior to this visit, the paper mill had been successfully running gear pumps in their facility for about twenty-five years. In the past, NETZSCH has repeatedly tried to sell its progressing cavity pumps to this mill. Until recently, no NEMO^® pumps were sold to this company.

However, months ago the paper mill changed their coating mixture by adding PCC (precipitated calcium carbonate).  They were now pumping various paper coatings which includes this shear sensitive/high viscosity material that consists of about 75 to 80 percent solids.  This new mix kept locking up the gear pumps and snapping their drive shafts.  Ultimately, the gear pumps began failing about every two to six weeks. 

This led to an expensive downtime, costing the customer about $12,000 every time they had to fix these pumps.  Because the mill was running four gear pumps, this became a very serious and costly issue.

With this situation being brought to our distributor's attention, he suggested a NEMO^® NM090SY01L pump to the customer to suit their needs.  If this new pump could last for at least three months without repair, the customer would be satisfied. 

This NM090 pump has successfully been installed at this paper mill for just over a year, and only now needs its first servicing.  The paper mill's own maintenance staff did a complete service job on the pump, replacing necessary parts including the pump's rotor and stator.  This in itself is only a mere fraction of the repair cost currently being spent to fix and maintain the gear pumps.

Because this paper mill was extremely satisfied with their first NM pump, they placed an order for three more NM090 pumps to replace their existing gear pumps.