SYDNEY AUSTRALIA 2227 (ABN 96 078 508 264) Ph:+61 2 9016 4695
"Helping others to have a future assures our own."
1991 The CEO, in the position of Engineering Superintendent of Consolidated Rutile, Stradbroke Island, conceived and, with the help of John Flynn and the tradesmen of Dunwich Workshop, designed and constructed of a half Megawatt pumping station. The station played a major role pumping water from the Kounpee Trench, a canal of freshwater running parallel and close to the shoreline, up to the ponds where the concentrators and dredges were working.Mainland engineering budgeted $360,000 for the construction of this pump. Their design involved using a Warman pump with a 70% efficiency. Instead of following this conventional approach, Kevin Loughrey purchased a Super Titan pump on the second-hand market and then reconditioned it at the Dunwich Workshop. Because reconditioning pumps was part of the everyday activity of a sandmining operation, the workshop was able to carry out this work efficiently and better than any other general engineering workshop in Australia. Switching gear was found in Rockhampton. It too was reconditioned, as was a Brush Motor located in Melbourne. The motor, once reconditioned came with a 5 year guarantee. The skid, upon which the pump stood and in which the motor and switchgear was housed was found at a dump. It was sandblasted and repainted with epoxy paint such that it looked like a new article.
All up the pump only cost $110,000 instead of the $360,000 predicted. It had an efficiency of 88%, instead of the 70% the Warman would have produced. This saved around $20,000 per annum in electricity costs. Connecting the motor to the pump was a fluid coupling speed convertor that allowed the speed of rotation of the pump to be dynamically adjusted to always produce the maximum efficiency possible for any given flow rate. The pump was commissioned in 1992 and operated for 15 years.