We’re always pleased with our custom fabrication work at Sure Flow Equipment, but a recently shipped project raised the bar a little on our pride in worksmanship.
Not only were we proud of the work involved, we were excited about its final destination, a lithium conversion plant. With the huge growth in electric vehicles Sure Flow is very pleased to be involved with a project that helps in producing a crucial component of the battery power system in these vehicles.
The customer in South America is very concerned about water conservation in their product process and like many of the custom straining systems we engineer, this unit will be used in their industrial water service.
The unit is carbon steel construction. It includes 4” class 150 raised face flanged inlet and outlet.
It incorporates high performance butterfly valves with lever operators for isolation.
This unit also includes a differential pressure gauge to monitor pressure drop across the strainer assembly, and alert operators when the screen and/or basket needs cleaning.
Leg assemblies make the unit completely self-supporting so that it does not rely on the balance of piping for support once it is installed in line.
The basket strainers, pictured in the upright position, have quick open covers with hinges to aid in basket removal for cleaning.
They have valves on drains, to aid in draining before opening the lids for cleaning.
The Y strainers on the left-hand side of the unit have a ball valve on the drain which allows for blow down (cleaning) of the screen without removing the cover.
Compared to many of our previous fabricated units this is quite unique in that both sides of the assembly have a Y strainer and basket strainer in series one after the other.
Our assumption is that the customer must be expecting high dirt loading. Even though it is a dual basket assembly, and they can switch side to side to take the basket strainer offline to be cleaned, we are assuming they are expecting the units will have a high debris load and clog up quickly.
The Y strainer has a larger mesh size which will do the initial straining of coarse debris. The screen can easily be cleaned by opening the drain valve. The basket strainer on the other hand has a finer mesh and will catch the finer dirt particles. The basket strainer basket can also be removed to be cleaned relatively easily due to a quick open cover.
Just to top off the uniqueness of this unit, it was vacuum sealed and crated for its journey to South America.
Using Sure Flow’s expertise in processing industrial water to custom fabricate a unique unit being used in South America to help in Lithium processing. This one ticks all the boxes and understandably puffed up all the engineering and fabrication team’s chests just a little!