【Refinery Industry】An Overview Of Mechanical Seals For High Temperature Pumps

Generally speaking, most centrifugal pumps used in refinery processes use mechanical seals. According to the survey and statistics of oil refineries, about 84% of pumps with mechanical seals are used. These mechanical seals can generally be divided into two types, which are spring-type mechanical seals and metal bellows mechanical seals.

Metal bellows mechanical seals are better high temperature mechanical seals, however they cost 6 to 10 times more to manufacture than spring-type mechanical seals. Our company found that metal bellows mechanical seals are used in less than 5% of high-temperature pumps in refineries, and most of them use spring-type mechanical seals with cooling and flushing systems. The cooling flushing volume is generally controlled at 4 to 8L/min to reduce the temperature of the seal chamber. This makes spring-type mechanical seals very expensive to operate. At the same time, due to the limitation of the sealing material, structure of the sealing of itself etc., it is not satisfactory in use. In order to better meet the needs of the above seal environment, we have been pursuing the development and production of a mechanical seal for high temperature pumps!