The aim of this site is to promote discussion of the many problems that occur in the sealing devices used

to control leakage from pump glands. If pump glands are not your thing ... well thanks for coming over. If you stay you might get interested in a wholly new subject.

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Packing Glands know how they work!

Soft packing stuffing boxes and pump glands appear so simple and are so common-place that we continue to cope without taking a few moments to understand why they fail or how to improve their performance. When I first worked as a maintenance technician it did not occur to me to wonder why it was that the metal shaft sleeve wore away at almost the same rate as the fibre packing. Later, charged with the responsibility of advising maintenance engineers I was faced with worn out shaft sleeves on a daily basis. The type of fibre made no difference, the metal sleeve became damaged against hemp, cotton, aramid, teflon, and especially asbestos and, later, the asbestos substitutes. It appeared to make no sense to have a soft material damage a metal surface so badly as to cause grooves and ridges in what was to become a familiar

pattern. The packing fibres available come lubricated with a variety of greasy materials or the packings are made of inherently lubricated materials such as teflon, or carbon fibre, often loosely braided materials contain fillers such as the silicone filler in braided teflon packing, and the search for the answer as to why the shaft becomes worn starts here. Fillers, grease, graphite grease, tallow, and the other materials used serve two functions in packing materials.
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The grease provides a lubricant at the shaft / packing interface. The material acts as a filler to prevent leakage occurring through the interstices of the packing itself.

Now take the packing material and place it in the pump stuffing box.

Cut to size, the packing pieces are eased down the shaft to the neck ring. The cut ends are staggered to prevent leakage through them, the lantern ring is placed in position, the final three pieces of packing tamped in place by the gland plate and the work is done. The next stage is to adjust the gland to ensure that it leaks. The leakage rate is controlled by the pressure exerted by the gland plate on the end of the packing set and the leak is allowed to develop along the shaft / packing interface to provide a cooling medium, removing the friction heat generated by the rotation of the shaft in the packing set. Two further things happen here. The grease in the packing melts slightly and is washed away by the flow of liquid along the shaft, and wear at the surface of the packing begins. A cycle is beginning which leads to the destruction of the packed gland as an effective leakage control device. The packing volume decreases as the lubricant is lost. Inevitably this causes the leakage rate to increase. As the rate increases more material is lost until the gland is tightened to reduce the leak to a minimum. In very few cases can an engineer claim that the fluid passing through his pumps is not contaminated by dirt particles. Iron oxides, chromium oxides, grit, aluminium oxides, mica, and many other minute contaminants will exist in all system fluids. These solids, being denser than the pumped fluids, will be centrifuged and concentrated at the outer edge of the volute casing at just the point where the lantern ring tapping is sited. This contaminated fluid is

then passed, at pressure, directly into the pump gland. Whatever material is used to seal a stuffing box if it is cooled by fluid contaminated by solids its surface will change producing an effective grinding surface. To improve the life of the stuffing box gland, contamination from the cooling water has to be avoided.. The gland packing has been wearing away. Through loss of lubricant it has lost volume, and the packing surface is exposed. The fluid passing through the gland, providing a cooling stream, is contaminated with various oxides and grit. The flow is increasing. A passing engineer notices it and takes appropriate action. The gland plate is tightened, pressure is exerted on the packing material to make it deform to reduce the clearance between it and the shaft. For a moment the flow of fluid is stemmed and the packing clamps down on the shaft trapping any solids moving through the gland at that moment. The interstices of the packing fill up with debris. The packing surface is now beginning to be converted from its original state into one consisting of oxides. The shaft sleeve itself may be contributing. Stainless steel ss316 or ss304, continually polished by the action of the packing replaces its surface of chrome oxide instantaneously, oxide which is taken up into the packing material. The build up of oxides on the surface of the packing changes the nature of the gland dramatically.

Our engineer has adjusted the gland plate and reduced the flow of fluid leaking out of the pump gland. The packing set has deformed to reduce the leak path. The deformation is not uniform. The action of the gland plate is to provide a force directed along the shaft which has to be translated into a radial force to effectively deform the packing. The friction at the outer edge of the stuffing box possibly supplemented by vulcanisation of the packing material with the metal surface of the stuffing box, prevents the packing from sliding easily. Consequently, the first two rings of packing, experiencing the most force, are unable to transmit the axial force evenly down the length of the stuffing box and invariably this results in an over-tightening of this area of the gland in order to effect sufficient pressure throughout the gland. Combine the over-tightening of the front end of the gland

with the oxide impregnated gland packing and we are beginning to re-shape our shaft sleeve. But there is more to come. As the rest of the packing set is adjusted by the overtightened first two rings the lantern ring is gradually pushed down the shaft. The packing pieces between the neck ring and the lantern ring are squeezed allowing the lantern ring to move further until in extreme cases it is cut off from its fluid supply. The gland is failing fast. Cut off from its coolant the gland can now overheat, causing rapid failure. Often before this occurs a partial repacking of the gland has taken place. New packing pieces have been put into the gland replacing the badly worn first three rings. But their life is limited because the rings placed into a worn stuffing box need to be deformed to accommodate the increased radial width of the stuffing box, and the cycle continues until the shaft sleeve is destroyed. . The purpose of the lantern ring is to provide a balancing pressure within the packing set and to allow the cooling water to flow evenly around the gland. The pressure within the gland is greater than the pump suction pressure but less than the discharge pressure of the pump and is easily calculated from

SP+ (DP-SP)/4
Where

SP = Suction pressure DP = Discharge pressure. Fluid is taken from a tapping in the volute casing and piped directly into the lantern ring. This is a convenient pressure source readily to hand and self contained within the pump unit but consider the action of the pump impeller. Rotating at high speed the impeller acts as a very efficient centrifuge. Any dirt particles entrained in the fluid will be flung to the outer limits of the volute casing, leaving the less dense fluid clean until the streams re-unite at the impeller throat on their way out of the pump. As all the particles of dirt are at the periphery of the impeller clean fluid exists at the impeller centre. The stuffing box pressure is greater than the suction pressure of the pump, but less than the volute pressure. The state of the fluid within the volute casing at the back of the impeller is relatively clean having been centrifuged by the spinning action of the impeller. To prevent contamination of the gland is therefore, a simple matter of reversing the flow of fluid through the gland, using the volute casing pressure to produce a flow back through the gland to the suction side of the pump. Leakage will be controlled in the same way as before but the gland, being supplied with clean fluid, will no longer be subject to contamination to the same degree as before and a longer interval between adjustments and replacements of the gland packing can be expected.

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Mechanical Seals
Why use a mechanical seal? After all is said and done, its easy to stuff a few extra bits of packing into a leaking stuffing box, and it doesn't require any skilled help to achieve this, does it? In this section we take a look at some of the reasons why you should be using seals. The Economic case and the Environmental case as well as considering some of the seal types available for general use. And bye the way, it takes a lot of skill to pack a pump properly with soft packing.

Seal Types

Single Seal Double Seal

Cartridge Seal

External Seal Stationary Seal

Split Seal

There are two basic cases to be made out for the use of rotary, fluid sealing technologies.

The Environmental case.

We all have a responsibility to conserve and protect. Conserve scarce commodities and to protect the environment from pollution. A major spill is news because it is dramatic but every day, millions of glands leak chemicals into the environment. You can stop those leaks and avoid cleanup costs. Have you thought about what that gland packing is doing to the shaft of your pump? It works as a brake, gripping the shaft and causing more power to be absorbed in the unit. The extra power consumption of the gland contributes to the "green-house" gases effect because more power has to be generated at the power plant to drive your pump. As an experienced engineer you will know that the overall thermal efficiency of the power plant is much less than 35%, so if you can reduce your take-off by reducing the demand by replacing your

glands with seals, less fuel is going to be consumed. Less fuel less emissions and less overall cost of running your plant. There is lots more to think about but space is limited so let's get on.

The Economic case.

If you are not convinced that environmental pollution is your problem, loss of hard cash from your pocket or that of your company should be! Water is becoming a scarce commodity. Let me re-phrase that - clean water is becoming a scarce commodity. For example, boiler feed water has to be at a high standard of cleanliness and chemicals are added to it to ensure that the water quality remains high. Make-up water is usually cooler than the water circulating in the system so additional fuel is required to heat the makeup water. It all costs money. Water is paid for on meterage used. More cost. But you'll look at the pump in the corner dripping away and think that doesn't seem too bad.

Ever done the mug test? A coffee mug holds 300cc. It is a simple matter to collect the leakage and note the time it takes to fill one mug. Leak Chart One drip/second 3 mm stream 6 mm stream 5,256 Litres / year 315,360 Litres / year 630,720 Litres / year

One drip a second is the standard rate for a properly adjusted packed gland : it leaks water, chemicals, and heat. Leaks usually get worse so look at the chart and now tell me if a leaking gland is inconsequential! Let's do another sum - how many leaking glands are there in your plant? Not all packed glands hold back water ... there may be more costly fluids leaking away. Each leaking gland is contributing to hard cash overhead expense. Packing is cheap, to buy, to fit, but its running cost is hidden and can be very expensive. A mechanical seal appears expensive to buy when compared with a packing ring, but properly installed a seal will run for many years. The optimum life of a seal is the period between major overhauls of the pump unit. A seal that fails early by this criteria is in need of investigation. The criteria for a failed seal is one in which the running faces are not worn down to their designed minimum. However, an engineer does not want to spend money on a super seal that will last virtually forever because that will also not prove to be cost effective. When a seal fails it is possible, with experience, or the aid of this web site, to determine the cause of failure and to rectify that fault. This I promise! I was asked to select a seal for a water pump working in a quarry. The engineer had been plagued with seal failures for many years

on this pump. His success criteria was that the seal should run from tear down to tear down (12 months). I selected a seal which was ten times more expensive than the one he had been using. It was fitted over the Easter Holiday 1982. Over a year later actually the week after the Easter holiday 1983 he rang me to say that the seal had failed. I reminded him of my promise that the seal would run for 12 months trouble free. He calmed down and started remembering, I told him that actually he had gotten an extra week over my promised 12 months! The increased price of the seal was around $400 but the saving in cost through not having to replace the seal several times in a year was over $1,500. The whole plant soon became converted to seals because it is possible to show a cost benefit analysis for every application. It is often the thought that seals are expensive that prevents the engineer from opting for them. The same applies to pump manufacturers. Ever wondered why your plant is fitted with a particular pump make, each with a packing gland? In a word, competition. In the enlightened 1990's whole life costing is becoming the way to assess a particular project's initial cost, but in the real everyday world engineers are facing the consequences of short sighted least cost solutions to immediate problems. But now you do not have to continue living with these problems if you look at the situation of your plant leakage in a business-like manner. This web site does not represent any one company manufacturing seals. There are good logistical and economic arguments for standardising on one manufacturer so long as they are major enough to run through all the applications you are likely to need. Whilst working for one of these majors in Saudi Arabia I found that it was common to find whole refineries using one manufacturers' seal. Long way from home, gutsy job, $millions at stake in oil revenues every day, it made a lot of sense for the engineers concerned. Only one company to deal with, lucky for some of them

it was mine and my expertise was part of the deal! But there are many designs of seal and some I would think of as cheap and not so nice could give some of you excellent service. So this is not about price, but very much concerns cost. Balancing the cost of the seal installation against the outcome compared with the alternative. There is a wide range of materials to choose from. The range encompasses small variations in generic materials such as carbon, or o-rings and different metals used to cope with the conditions that faces the seal. I am not encouraging you to experiment blindly but to think the problem through and choose your materials carefully. We are not going to look at the materials in detail here. For that information pop over to seal troubleshooting I have not listed all seal types, the contact-less gas seals for instance are not covered here, this is because they fall outside the general seal types I aim to cover. For details on highly specialised seals of this and other types contact your favoured manufacturer for details. In the links section of this site you will find hyper links to some manufacturers. Now go look at the various seal types that are available to you for general use. In these sections you will find explanations of seal types and some of the problems associated with them.

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Installation Checks
Face the facts, seals fail. They do not wear out. Most often something comes along to disturb the smooth running of the pump and BLAM you are facing a steady leak which has already destroyed your seal by damaging the seal faces. But there is another case. The seal that leaks on startup after maintenance. A seal that lasts a week without letting go is generally thought to be OK. By the way that's a ROT (Rule of Thumb). Running mechanical seals is an art form. There is a lot of science in it but either you have the knack or you do not (in which case you need this web site bad). A seal that leaks after maintenance has been badly installed. It is very unwise to ignore the basic checks listed here because without these checks there is no certainty that your seal will perform at all, let alone give a reasonable running life. I hate having to go over a job again after having fitted it all back together... don't you?

Pre-installation checks.
1. 2. 3. 4.

You have the correct seal and all the parts needed for the replacement. You have the pump drawing to hand with installation dimensions or the seal manufacturer's drawing. The pump stuffing box is clean On split casing pumps the gasket does not extend into the stuffing box.

5.

6.

The shaft is free of scratches and burrs, threads are taped, and keyways are filled flush with the shaft surface to prevent seal elastomers from being cut on the keyway edge (a dummy wooden key insert is ideal). All the seal parts are in their protective coatings at this stage.

Pump Checks
Shaft Run-out
Shafts get bent. The spinning impeller has unequal loading on in causing the shaft to deflect away from the volute throat. Constant deflection causes weakness and can lead to a permanent offset of the shaft leading to shaft run out. Shaft run out is bad for seals. It causes them to flex twice on every revolution of the shaft. At high enough speeds this can cause a vibration in the seal which allows the seal faces to OPEN. BANG failed seal. So, look into the dark recesses of your lockers and pull out the Dial Test Indicator (DTI) or Clock Gauge that lurks there, unloved & unused and check the shaft of your pump for any damaging shaft deflections. Single stage overhung pumps should be checked near the seal running position but multi stage pumps should be checked at suitable intervals along the shaft as well as at the seal running position.

The run out should not exceed 0.002 inches or 0.05 m.metres.

Shaft Sleeve Concentricity.

You have checked the shaft for run-out and because the seal elastomer has a

tendency to wear a fret ring on the shaft a shaft sleeve is fitted to protect the shaft. When a new shaft sleeve is fitted, and this should be with every new seal, it is a good idea to re-run the shaft run-out check to ensure that the sleeve is concentric with the shaft. The run out should not exceed 0.002 inches or 0.05 m.metres. A note about shaft sleeves. It is a false economy to omit to change the shaft sleeve when replacing a mechanical seal. I was called out to a cooling water pump supplying a 100Mw Power station. The shaft size was 230mm and it took three men two days to strip and rebuild the seal box. The shaft sleeve cost $4,000 and the seal cost $10,000. The new seal had been fitted onto the old sleeve and leaked immediately on startup. The seal faces were intact but having been run for 24 hours in that condition another new seal assembly was required. On examination it was found that the o-ring contacting the shaft sleeve surface had worn a groove (Fretting damage) and the new o-ring was unable to seal against this damaged surface. The extent of the damage was not immediately obvious to the eye but by carefully measuring the surface the fault was found. Amount saved on first installation $4,000, total cost of seal change $25,500, and it should have cost $15,500. Believe me, skimping on the job is not the same as saving hard cash.

Axial Shaft Movement

Set up your DTI to measure the amount of axial movement of the shaft. The amount will vary according to the type of pump, its bearing configuration, and the type of thrust bearing in use. Essentially there are four types of thrust bearings
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Deep groove ball bearings Roller bearings Michell, Kingsbury, or thrust pad bearings, usually made of white metal bearing surfaces. Balance piston thrust absorbing arrangement. This type is often found on high pressure multi-stage water pumps where the hydraulic forces are partially balanced by the impellers and controlled leakage past a balance piston provides the final stage of rotating unit positioning.

The basic principle is that the shaft should be set to its running position before

attempting to fit the seal. In the case of cartridge seals, the seal cover plate should be fixed to the pump casing, the shaft positioned, and then the seal locking screws tightened to the shaft. Non cartridge types need to have a datum mark scribed onto the shaft relative to the seal plate position and then the fitting dimension marked from this point. A note about fitting position. It is not good practice to fit a new seal by looking at the old set-screw marks and then lining up on them. If you want good seal performance then start out right ... measure the distance required, don't take short cuts. The last seal could have been fitted incorrectly, perhaps causing the rebuild that is now necessary. You are storing up future trouble if you skimp.

Seal Housing Squareness

The seal stationary must be fitted at 90 degrees to the axis of the shaft. Failing to achieve this will cause the seal head to move to take up any mis-alignment. This movement offers an opportunity for the seal faces to open and for the ingress of dirt particles. If you are changing out packing and up-grading your equipment to a mechanical seal you need to pay close attention to setting the seal housing closing plate in the correct position. The basic check is as shown in the diagram.

It is also wise to check the bore of the seal housing at this point for concentricity with the shaft. Put the sensing tip of the Dial Indicator inside the bore on the wall of the seal housing and rotate the shaft. A small amount of misalignment is permitted but the important thing is to check that the seal body cannot touch the seal housing wall at any point of its rotation.

General Checks

While the pump unit is in the shop for maintenance take the opportunity to ensure that the cooling water jacket is clear of debris, that any other cooling water arrangement is cleared of any obstruction. Orifice plates controlling the flow of water to a seal housing should be checked dimensionally correct. A seal starved of its ration of cooling water will be very unforgiving and cause you lots of grief in a short time. This kind of fault is very difficult to diagnose for the average engineer. Even the best have trouble with this one, too! So check it out now while the doing is easy. Bearings need to be replaced if they have been running with any pump leakage around. Moisture ingress into a bearing dramatically reduces a bearing's useful life. If you are changing out soft packing for a mechanical seal replace the bearings on the unit too. The leakage from the packing gland is more than enough to damage the bearings. Check the impeller for cavitation damage indicating a system problem that might go un-noticed during normal running conditions. Cavitation can cause vibration in the pump shaft which will affect the seal 's performance. I know you will ensure that the impeller sealing rings are replaced or re-bushed to keep the clearances within design limits. Allowing recirculation within the pump volute is no way to keep the efficiency of your plant at the highest level, and it can increase the pressure inside the seal housing which will cause your seal to wear out faster!

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Troubleshooting Seal Failures

There are a number of prerequisites to seal troubleshooting.
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First , You MUST have the complete seal as removed from the pump to examine. Second , You need to know what materials are in the construction of the seal. Third, You need to know what the liquid is that the seal is working in and how it reacts to conditions surrounding the seal.

Without knowing about the specific circumstances involved in a seal failure examination of the seal parts will tell you what went wrong. The signs are there for you to read, and in this section I intend to present the most commonly found symptoms of failure. The first sign to note is the seal faces. If the soft face is worn down to its holder the bet is that the seal has worn down through its economic life in that application. But be sure that you are not being fooled, look at the mating face to check that it has a concentric running track, no signs of scoring, no raised edges from damaged plating, in fact no out of the ordinary signs at all. If you can do that, the seal is not a failed unit just a rarely encountered worn out unit. Find one if you can because this seal is the aim for every seal in your plant. My first move on every engineer I encountered out there was to tell him that my aim was to make all of his seals wear out. That statement brought about some interesting first

time encounters, that I can report! What are the benefits of having your seals wear out? With experience comes predictability, and reliability. A seal letting go should not be a surprise. On each application you should be able to predict the life of your seal unit. Reliable seals means no intermediate tear downs for your pump units. Emergency down time interrupts production, causing loss of product, loss of raw materials, loss of work in progress, loss, loss. The most expensive seal that I ever sold was over $50,000 worth. In an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia I could not get enough of them. Loss of production on the line using these seals cost $1 million an hour of downtime. Was it justifiable to fit a $100 seal and save $49,900 per seal and have it fail for four hours every three weeks? When there was a seal available that ran for two years tear-down to tear-down? When people say to you that seals are too expensive, measure the costs very carefully, ignore the price of the seal. Go back over these pages and find the custard plant example. It isn't just the oil plants that have high values of lost product in relation to the cost of seals. Seals that wear out are reliable, they save the cost of redundant plant, of stand-by pump units, save the cost of repair, of down-time, the replacement cost of the seal, of cleaning up around the area of a failed unit, corrosion of pump parts, corrosion of concrete foundations, of holding lots of warehouse spares. It is a goal that every engineer using seals should aim for and be proud to admit. Your seal has failed, it did not last in service for as long as you wanted. What went wrong? The first step is to look at the mating surfaces of the seal faces. In all the following cases I will consider the carbon / ceramic face combination for simplicity. The signs are found on the hard faces just as clearly Perfect wear track A perfect wear track has a carbon track evenly deposited around the hard face, concentric with the hard face bore, and no wider than the carbon face. If the seal is leaking look at the secondary seals, the elastomers and gaskets that make up the installation. One difficult diagnosis was on a small back-pull-out pump on boiler water

circulation service. The seal chamber was very small and the seal head sat on the impeller boss with the drive spring keyed into the back of the impeller. The seal dripped at a steady rate right from installation. The leak was eventually traced to the impeller nut. There was no gasket fitted behind the nut which allowed water to penetrate under the impeller and along the shaft bypassing the seal. We cured that one. Wide wear track (I)
q q q q

Wear track is much wider than the carbon face. Seal leaks steadily when rotating, but no leak when stopped. Equipment bearing failure Shaft whip or shaft deflection due to overload or bent shaft.

Wide wear track (II)

q q q q

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Wear track is slightly wider than the carbon face. Seal leaks steadily when rotating, but no leak when stopped. Mating surface is not square to shaft Check the gland plate surface in contact with the mating ring. It should be clean, free of burrs, and the ring properly seated in its housing. Check seal box housing for concentricity with shaft axis. Look for pipe strain on pump casing causing deflection of the unit.

Wear track off centre

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Mis-alignment of the stationary seal. If stationary ring is damaged leaking will occur when the pump is running or stopped. The ring can be cracked if there is contact with the shaft. The seal box is not concentric with the pump axis. The seal plate is not concentric with the seal box.

High wear and Grooving.

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Seal drips steadily when running or stopped. On hard faces this indicates a lack of lubrication and cooling. On carbon seals it indicates abrasive materials embedded in carbon surface. Examine the seal box to see if it is a "dead-end " type. Disastrous on vertical pumps. Air gets trapped in the seal box and the seal runs dry. Insert a vent. Tap it into the suction side of the pump, provided it is not under vacuum. You will increase the cooling, eliminate the trapped air and extend the seal life.

The abrasives embedded in the seal face are a symptom of the seal faces opening, the wear and scoring are the visible results of this pattern. Eliminate the reasons for the faces opening first. If you cannot prevent solids penetration of the faces change the face materials for a hard face set. For light contamination of the fluid with solids, try tapping the seal box into the pump suction and centrifuge the solids out of the fluid entering the seal box. Fluid will be drawn from the area behind the impeller and will be relatively clean.

Uneven wear pattern There are lots of possibilities here, but they generally fall into two categories.
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(a) Mechanical distortion Uneven contact pattern on stationary ring The face is being distorted by un-even torquing of the seal plate. Look for high spots with faint contact markings in between, you may see one faint area or two or more. Four high spots will align with the four bolts clamping the seal plate and indicate over tightening of the bolts. However, the basic problem is that the installation is causing the face to go out of flat. Look for "wire drawing" across the carbon face on a seal that has stood stationary for some time. Check for anything which could cause the seal face to be fitted out of square with the shaft axis as this can cause these symptoms. (b) Thermal distortion Even marking around the seal face indicates that the sealed liquid is vaporising at the seal interface. A reduction in lubrication and opening of seal faces is happening. The indication is a radial pattern of dark and light contact patterns. Externally you may notice vapour puffing out of the seal box, the seal could occasionally emit a high pitch scream, there could be a "popping" noise. Uneven marking of light and dark contact patterns extending only part way around the surface indicates that the flushing of the seal is restricted and is only effective at the flush injection point. Look for chipping of the carbon on the ID and OD. Does the fluid change state? A carbonising fluid will glue the seal surfaces together causing wear on the drive lugs and chipping of the OD of the carbon face. Pieces of carbon are ripped off the carbon, sometime causing damage right through the mating face. You will not miss it. Increase the cooling of the seal. Check the existing arrangements to see that they are working correctly and one seal is not being starved of
r r r r r r r r

r r

cooling water. Check the actual pump suction pressure to ensure that the pressure is above the flash point of the fluid. Check the bush clearance at the bottom of the seal box for wear. Check the fitting length. If there is high wear, scoring and grooving, and heat checking, this indicates overtightening of the seal and locking up of the seal head. The seal may scream.

Un-common symptoms.
Coning. The running track is very narrow and the carbon face appears worn on the ID or the OD. This is caused by over pressurising the seal. It is very rare on the ID as the seal will probably blow open before this damage gets really going, but it can be found more commonly on the OD. Check the design limit of the seal and use an appropriate one for the service. Pitting of the carbon
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If the damage is confined to the seal face suspect a poor grade of carbon with voids. Gases trapped in the voids expand and blow out, damaging the face. If the damage is more general suspect chemical attack. Oleum, nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sodium hypochlorate, aqua regia, and others, need careful seal selection.

In both cases choose a denser carbon.

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If the carbon has chipping inside or out, check the drive lug, if it too is worn suspect that the fluid is changing state and sticking the faces together. Cracked carbon. Check the elastomer for swelling putting the carbon under tensile stress, or mis-handling on installation.

The problems seen on the rotating head will be mirrored in the stationary face, heat checking, scoring, heavy wear pattern, cracking, and additionally, plating removal. Heat check will cause problems with plated materials. The main reason is the differential expansion rates of base metals and plated metals. Cracks appearing in the surface will shave the carbon surface causing rapid wear. Stellite gives the most problems in this area and nickel based tungsten carbide coatings are to be

preferred to the cobalt base carbide coatings. Plating does not give corrosion resistance so if the fluid will attack the base metal, plating removal will occur. Cracked stationary. Common cause is poor fitting leading to distortion of the component. Check also the drive lug or locating pin. Badly fitted parts incorrectly located will crack at the drive lug. Heat cracking or distortion will cause a crack anywhere on the ring. Hard faces running on silicon carbide can "smear" the surface if run dry, a partial melting takes place causing the face to liquefy. Elastomers. This section concentrates on O-rings but wherever rubber materials are used in different shapes and forms these notes will apply. Rubber bellows, U-cups, chevrons, etc. may have rubber compounds in their construction and you may need to know what they are to solve your problem. A common cause for failure of O-rings is fitting of the wrong grade for the pump environment. The correct grade needs to be considered for temperature range and chemical compatibility. Remember water is a chemical compound and not just any O-ring can be used to seal it effectively. High pressure will squeeze an O-ring and can extrude it out of its groove. This will effectively lock up the seal component, fit backup rings. The O-ring will have cuts along its length indicating extrusion. High temperature has two effects. The O-ring goes square taking on the shape of the groove, and it goes hard. A hardened ring may also crack having lost its flexibility. Chemical attack can also cause cracking and hard setting of the ring so consider both aspects of the installation. Ozone Attack. Buna-N elastomers should be checked before they are fitted for cracking and reduced flexibility. Poor storage conditions can cause damage to this material if it is stored near to operating electric motors. The most common cause for O-ring failure is .. cuts and nicks caused by fitting over burrs, splined shafts, sharp edges, and keyways, to mention just a few of the hazards. Clean off all burrs and tape sharp edges to protect the ring. They are easily cut and such damage will go un-noticed until the pump is pressurised. A

slow drip, drip, will alert you to the problem. It will not stop until you change the seal. Odd-one. Rubber materials have a tendency to vulcanise, or to bond themselves to metal parts. I was called to an oil plant under construction. The pumps had been left in high ambient temperatures of upto 55 deg C. for months, if not years. All the installed seals needed to be removed and the metal parts cleaned and new rubber parts fitted. Had the pumps been run without replacing these parts the seals would have failed well before their design life, and the tell-tale signs might not have been recognised if the history of the pumps had not been known. Metal Parts Here we are considering the springs, set screws, drive lugs, and the seal body. I hope you see the wisdom of having all the parts of the seal available for examination. The clue you need to will almost always be in the part that got lost or thrown away. You can tell what kind of luck I enjoy. Make it shop practice to put all seals into a separate box (after cleaning if necessary), and only dispose of them when you are satisfied with the seal performance. When refurbishing seals consider their performance before destroying the evidence by replacing the parts and re-engineering the seal faces. Springs. There are two types of spring in use. A metal bellows seal has some spring like characteristics but they are a case standing alone. Seals are either fitted with multiple springs, or more commonly, a single coil spring which often transmits drive from the shaft to the seal head. Springs are under constant shear stress and stressed material is subject to higher corrosion rates. Misalignment of seal components require the springs to work harder and can lead to fatigue failure. The most common cause of spring failure is chloride stress corrosion. This occurs in stainless steel materials commonly found in water pumps. Flexing of the spring allows attack by chlorides in the water of the stainless steel surface, propagating crack formation. The crack quickly leads to seal failure. Hastalloy C material has a superior resistance to corrosion effects and suffers less failure.

Set Screws. The set screws fitted to mechanical seals are not hardened. Hardened materials lose their corrosion resistance. The Allen socket heads are therefore subject to damage if the screws are overtightened. Overtightening can also cause distortion in the seal body at the screw site. The screws are not suitable for use on hardened shafts or shaft sleeves as they will lose grip on these surfaces. Drive Lugs. Lugs or pins used to transmit drive to the seal head can become bent or be broken if seal faces stick together on start-up. Wear is caused if the seal is subject to vibration, or mis-alignment. Seal Body. We are considering metals parts here but some of these symptoms are common to other seal body materials. Rubbing marks around the seal body. Look for an obstruction in the seal box. A gasket or accumulated solids. Consider also the flush or recirculating line. The flow from the line could interfere with the ability of the seal to respond to runout or misalignment. Corrosion effects are increased with increased temperature. Hard faces can be affected due to the higher potential for friction heat generation. Local corrosion effects may be visible around the seal faces. Discoloration of metal surfaces indicate local high temperature conditions. Consider the whole life of the pump. If your plant operators use cleaning materials or solvents, are these causing your seal problems. The cleaning materials can damage the elastomers, the rule is, check all phases the seal goes through to trace that really difficult fault cause. Bellows Seals There are three types of bellows seal, the semi-rigid bellows, the flexible bellows, and the rubber bellows seal. If anyone would like to tell me their experience of the semi-rigid type, characterised by a moulded bellows, I would like to hear your story. The flexible metal bellows is constructed from a number of thin-wall plates welded together. There are single and double bellows types but all of them are designed for use in high temperature applications. I have found them in other applications but the main feature is that they use high temperature gasket materials as secondary seals. Graphited lead packings, asbestos (or substitutes)

gaskets, spiral-wound stainless steel gaskets, and other suitable materials. The high temperature applications mean problems in design. Differential expansion of carbon and metal parts limits the materials that can be used to hold the carbons into the seal head. These end fittings are often made in Carpenter 42 or Invar 36 although I have used seals with Monel K in specialised applications (Hydrofluoric Acid). Carpenter and Invar have poor corrosion resistance. Corrosion can cause weakening of the end fitting leading to loss of grip of the carbon ring. Bellows do break. However I have experienced few breakage's in these seals until after they have seen service for many years. Probable cause was fatigue failure. Frequent bellows failure should be investigated as stainless steel bellows are subject to chloride stress corrosion. Vibration and mis-alignment causes seal failure in common with other types. The high temperature environment that these seals are designed for is more likely to cause coking and carbonising problems when hydrocarbons are being pumped as in hot oil pumps or heat transfer oil pumps. Other substances can cause these effects too, sugar being just one other example. Effective cooling of the seal faces is therefore most important. Bellows seals are sometimes fitted with a vibration damper. This is a ring situated under the carbon holder which contacts the shaft to dampen any harmonic motion building up. A stainless steel shaft expands at three times the rate of the seal metal parts. Incorrect clearances can cause the shaft to grab the seal head and prevent it from moving freely. Not a common fault but look out for it. Rubber Bellows Seal. In time rubber parts will bond with metal parts used in the seal. Vulcanisation can be actively promoted and rubber bellows seals rely on this bonding to ensure a tight shaft seal and good grip to transmit drive. For this reason be careful of using any lubricating media when fitting these seals, follow the manufacturer's instructions. Silicone grease to aid fitting should never be used on these seals. The larger the seal the more difficult it becomes to fit and the greater the risk of severe damage occurring to the seal faces. When all else fails read the instructions, old engineer's proverb.

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Why Seals Fail

Seals fail for a number of reasons. Your job is to pinpoint the reason and fix it. Here you are in a situation in which the seal has run for a period well beyond the installation period. Its leaking and now you have to make a decision. Has the seal failed or simply worn out? What you decide now will determine whether you fit a replacement seal or seek out an alternative type. The basics are simple. A worn out seal will leak when the seal face has worn away completely. If we extend this criteria to all leaking seals it becomes sadly obvious that the majority of seals, perhaps 85% of process seals, fail long before they are worn out. This section is devoted to the three main reasons why seals fail. Only three you say? Three main reasons and lots of routes to them. Seals fail because ...
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The seal faces open. Heat causes a problem. The chemical environment causes a material failure.

OK so there is another category ... the installation failure, but that's covered in the installation section.

Seal Faces Open The shaft moves for many reasons, those that affect the seal operation are: Axial
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End play Thrust movement Temperature growth Impeller adjustment

Radial
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Bearing wear Bent shaft Shaft whip Shaft deflection (discharge closed)

Vibration
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System NPSH incorrect causing cavitation Harmonic vibration, check the coupling, does it "hum" or "buzz". Rubber couplings can operate with high degrees of misalignment without total failure but cause problems for the seal. Impeller imbalance Slip-stick. Not surprisingly not much is known about what happens between seal faces in service. There are theories. The faces acquire a film of liquid that lubricates the seal surfaces, the carbon face wears slightly depositing a layer of carbon on the stationary face so that the carbon face runs on carbon , but there is a condition that causes the faces to vibrate open when pumping non-lubricating fluids. Fluids near their vapour point, very hot water, can cause these conditions. The seal faces "chatter " against each other in a slip-stick motion slipping when the drive lug hits the seal head, bouncing round and momentarily stopping before being hit by the drive lug again. To be a sealman you have to believe. Poor pump performance. This statement covers a host of sins. Consider running two or three pumps into one discharge line, the odds are that the pump performances will not be perfectly matched. Does it matter? Not really, unless you are concerned about your seal life, because what is happening here? One or other of the pumps, because of poor performance now combined with poor system design, will be experiencing discharge

throttling, tending to over load the impeller at the throat, causing turbulent flow and shaft bending. Look into other causes of poor pump performance. Other causes The seal runs against a stationary component. The stationary is usually fitted into the seal plate which is bolted to the pump and sealed with a gasket. Now, I do not want to sound too pedantic here but you have to realise that the seal stationary has to be fitted square to the axis of the shaft and in proper alignment with the axis of the pump shaft. The stationary has to be fitted into the seal-plate square. None of this is easy to achieve and each error compounds the next. The rotating head has to follow any misalignment from square that the stationary carries. Every rotation of the shaft causes the rotating seal head to move backand-forth twice. Interfere with that movement and the faces are open. Difficult as it is to get the stationary fitted correctly, should you achieve it then other factors come into play to limit the excellence of your work. Stress imposed by pipe strain, coupling misalignment, or plain thermal growth put the pump casing out of shape just enough to cause the seal to work harder. All of the items described mean that the shaft and seal are in constant relative movement. If anything interferes with the free movement of the seal, the faces open. When the faces open, dirt in the liquid penetrates the lapped surfaces, embeds in the soft face which gradually changes to a grinding surface to score and wear away the hard face of the stationary ring. Have you noticed this effect? Do you look at your failed seals? You should, because on those faces lie clues to help you find the faults opposing long seal life. Well when we have gotten through this section and onto the tell tale signs I bet you will take a bit more notice of your failed seal bodies. The main reasons why seal faces open are:q

The elastomer sticks to the shaft. Spring loaded elastomers will stick to the shaft, O-rings will flex by 0.005" (0.13mm) and then roll. O-rings will fret a shaft but spring loaded elastomers (teflon wedges, chevrons, etc.) can cause serious surface damage to your shaft or sleeve leading to early seal failure. A leak under the seal head looks very much like a face leak. The shaft is out on machining tolerance. Correct tolerance is +0.000" to 0.002" from nominal. A packing sleeve is not machined to any close

tolerance, after all it is going to wear against the packing so its external dimension is not too important. An oversize sleeve or shaft will cause the seal to hang-up, an under size shaft or sleeve will prejudice the ability of the elastomers to seal the head to the shaft/sleeve. The surface finish on the shaft/sleeve is too rough. A lathe finish is not good enough. The finish should be at least 32 RMS and for that a ground finish is required. Have you got a hardened shaft on your pump unit? The seal set screws will not "bite" into the shaft and could slip causing the setting dimension of the seal to alter. The pumped fluid changes state. Sea water, brine pumps, sugary solutions, cause crystallising when the salts come out of solution or the sugars become caramelised. Other coking substances, heat transfer oil, tar, cause similar problems. You will see the build up of material around the leak site. Solids can cause the seal head to stick to the shaft or restrict the o-ring flexibility. Take a look at the double seal arrangement, back to back version. Used on some services the O-ring could very quickly become clogged preventing the seal head from moving to accommodate wear of the faces. Incorrect setting length at installation. You may never figure this one out. Just make sure that the fitting dimension is correct when installing the seal. Otherwise sometime in the future the seal will let go, usually after the pump is stopped, and the faces will look good but only partly worn. What has happened is that the spring pressure has reduced to the point where the seal leaks during idle periods. This can be difficult to spot, unless you know what to look for ... and when. Fretting. Very small movements between components causes a polishing action. The polishing action removes the surface molecules. On pump shafts made of stainless materials the surface of the metal consists of chromium oxide. Elastomers moving very slightly against this surface wipe away the oxide which immediately reforms. The oxide is carried into the wiping surface changing its character completely. A rubber ring coated with chromium oxide becomes more efficient as a polishing, grinding surface and removes material at a faster rate. A "fret" ring is characterised by a polish mark on the shaft surface at the point where the seal elastomer seals against the shaft. If worn badly enough the fret ring can cause a new seal to fail on installation because the elastomer cannot seal effectively due to the damage on the surface. Distortion of the stationary face. This is not common but the stationary could be badly fitted leading to over tightening, especially the silicon

carbide grades which are designed with a lip to be clamped in the seal plate. Failure under these circumstances may be confused with cracking due to heat checking of the component. S.C grades of 99.9% only heat check if they are tightened un-evenly, so check out your grade and suspect poor fitting if its a high grade material failing by cracking. With other materials such as tungsten carbide, or plated surfaces, such as stellite, consider the distorting effect of poor clamping if no other solution presents itself. Face Mis-centering or run-off. This is not common and is easy to diagnose. The faces are not concentric and the rotating head comes off the stationary track and picks up dirt. Scoring of the stationary and an off centre running track gives you all you need to know. Incorrect grade of O-ring material. Lots of things happen to elastomers so check out the ones on your seal, are they swollen, hard, squashed, shiny, cracking? The seal hits something, it is prevented from moving to accommodate runout. Lots of possibilities here, so I list a few.
r

1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

The shaft is bent and hitting the stationary face. You will notice this pretty quick, but bear in mind that the running clearance of the seal components and the shaft may be quite tight, so a small shaft displacement may not be obvious, the seal will show you what is happening. Solids in the seal chamber hitting the seal. Incorrectly fitted gasket extending into the seal chamber. Split casing pumps can suffer this problem. The shaft is not concentric with the seal chamber. Insufficient clearance in the seal chamber. Check this out if you are changing seal type or intend using different materials to cope with other problems. A seal box recirc line is directed at the seal faces. Most seal chambers have a radial flow insert when most seal manufacturer's will tell you that a tangential flow insert is safer and causes less disturbance to the seal faces.

Heat Causes Seal Failures.

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Heat affects the elastomer. This the part most sensitive to extremes of temperature. Heat can change the state of the fluid being pumped.

Raising the temperature of corrosive liquids increases their potency. A 16 deg F rise doubles the corrosion rate of most acids. Differential expansion rates can destroy plated seal surfaces. Low grade silicon carbide will crack with sudden changes in temperature. Differential expansion of shaft and pump casing can change the face loading by altering the fitting dimension.

We now have the over-view of heat related failures so let us look in more detail at what is happening. Elastomers. A wide range of elastomers are in use and many of them are rubber compounds. Teflon materials have a predetermined heat range of upto 226 deg C beyond which Teflon breaks down and burns making small amounts of phosgene gas. Teflon should not be used in temperatures close to its ultimate limit because it is a heat insulator and local heat production may cause it to reach its ultimate temperature. Rubber compounds are made by baking the material until it is cured to a predetermined hardness or durometer. The various materials formed in this way, nitrile, viton, buna-n, and others, are commonly found in sealing applications. Less common is Kalrez a specialised compound with a high resistance to chemical attack. Formed in a heat setting process, these materials continue to be affected by the heat applied during the life of the seal. At temperatures beyond the range of the rubber seal the material continues to harden. As it hardens the shape of the seal takes on the shape of the groove if an O-ring or splits appear in rubber bellows as flexibility is lost. O-rings take on a "compression" set and appear oval and feel hard to the touch. O-rings are manufactured with a 10% tolerance oversize to allow for some thermo-setting in service. At higher temperatures the elastomer life to full compression set will depend upon the temperature and time at this temperature. The point for you is that exceeding the range of the rubber parts of your seal will shorten the working life of the seal and you need to bear this in mind. An odd case, in Saudi Arabia I was called to a refinery that had been under construction for several years and pumps had been installed, but not run, for varying periods. Pumps under going test runs were leaking along the shafts. Investigation showed that over time in ambient temperatures of 55 deg C the seal elastomers had baked hard and vulcanised to the metal parts. All seals had to be changed.

Heat is generated from the friction running at the seal faces. Depending upon the type of face material and the seal box environment a rise of around 25 deg C above the seal fluid temperature can occur. Look at your seal types, where is the elastomer in relation to the seal faces. The nearer the elastomer is placed to the running faces the greater the additional heat it will experience. The use of low friction seal face combinations will reduce this effect. The carbon / ceramic combination has the lowest friction rating with hard faces such as tungsten / tungsten faces the highest. Unbalanced seals, because the face weight is varying with the system pressure, can experience greater rises in face generated heat creating damage to the elastomer. Excessive heat producing a temperature rise of 55 Deg C on a Viton O-ring will reduce its useful life to less than 1000 hours running time. For a seal that is expected to run for one year that is an 88% reduction in useful life. An 82 deg C rise will reduce the life of the seal by 97%. Loss of water to a cooling water jacket, loss of any cooling arrangements puts your seals at risk. I was called to a split-casing boiler feed pump that was experiencing out-board seal failure. Normally I would expect more problems with the in-board (coupling end ) seal due to less opportunity to dissipate the heat soak along the shaft. Examination of regular temperature recordings made of the cooling water system and seal box temperatures revealed that the out-board seal was being starved of cooling water flow. Dismantling the orifice plate controlling the flow to the in-board seal showed excessive wear enlarging the orifice and allowing through a larger proportion of the flow. Replacing the orifice plate solved the problem. All can seem well with your equipment but the seals will always let you know first when problems are arising. Changing state of the fluid Liquid gases and other volatile fluids can vaporise and freeze water out of the air on the outside of the seal restricting movement. Shortly before I took up my post in Saudi Arabia a liquid propane pump blew its seal open due to a build up of ice around the seal faces. Liquid released into the atmosphere created a vast cloud of highly flammable gas. Fortunately no one was hurt and no explosion occurred but it was a close thing. It was thought appropriate to fit a double seal with a

barrier fluid for future installations. Liquids changing state to a gas experience enormous volume increases. Water increases in volume by 1700 times, so a small drop vaporising across a seal face will explosively blow apart the faces. Boiler feed pumps and other hot water pumps can be heard "popping" or "puffing" if the seals are not working correctly. As the water droplets expand and open the seal faces more water rushes in to cool the area, collapsing the steam bubble and causing the faces to snap shut. Another small droplet penetrating the faces vaporises and causes the faces to open again. Water treatment crystals, entrained oxides, other dirt particles are trapped between the faces as they close. Your seal is on its way to the scrap yard. Some fluids crystallise with additional heat. Sea-water, brine, and similar fluids leaking past your seal and drying out around the seal plate can build up to affect the seal head and prevent it from moving. Crystals can also score the running surfaces of the seal causing damage leading to failure. Hydrocarbons form coke as they partially burn or vaporise. Coking causes a hard solid to form around the seal effectively stopping it from moving freely. A similar effect is seen in food plants handling product containing sugar. Sugar escaping across a seal face can crystallise, or simply burn and coke. The signs are un-mistakable on the seal face. Heat can cause impurities to come out of solution and plate onto seal surfaces, building up hard films or lacquers. Heat can destroy seal faces. I have mentioned some of these effects but I think a defined list will help you. Plated materials can experience differential expansion. Often materials such as stellite are plated over stainless steel. The expansion rates are poorly matched so operating outside of the design limits of the materials will cause strains to appear in the plating interface, causing cracks to appear. The cracks will cause the carbon face to wear dramatically fast. The less expensive ceramic material (85%) will crack if cold shocked. Sudden changes in temperature of 38 deg C or more will destroy the seal face. The higher quality ceramic (99.9%) will cold shock if it is under distorting stress, properly fitted and evenly clamped it will survive sudden changes in

temperature. Get to know which materials are being fitted into your seal installations. Carbon rings using fillers and fitted into high temperature pumps can have the filler material melt out of the carbon causing them to become porous Poor carbons with voids can blister and pit as the trapped air or gases expand and blows pieces off the carbon surface. Lapped seal faces can distort, going out of flat. The effect of touching the lapped surface with a finger is to coat the surface with dirt and skin oils but also to distort the surface away from flat by the application of heat from your hand. Distorted seal faces leak. Heat increases the corrosiveness of most corrosive materials
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The carbon part of the seal will show signs of being attacked. O-ring grooves can be damaged limiting their ability to seal effectively. O-rings can become hard or start to crack, or become swollen and excessively soft. Metal surfaces can be attacked and appear pitted which will prejudice the seals ability to work properly. Springs and other highly stressed parts can fail due to increased corrosion.

Expansion due to heating effects. All metals expand when heated. A stainless steel shaft 48" long by 4" dia will grow 0.138" in length when heated through 300 deg F. The working limit of most carbon seal faces is 0.125" . Seal compression is set at about 0.064" to produce the spring face weight. A seal mounted on a shaft moving by 0.138" with other expansion effects happening to the pump casing is in danger of opening. Apart from ensuring the accurate placing of the seal on the pump shaft there is little to be done to compensate for such movement. Tell-tale signs of inaccurate setting of the seal will be where you need to be looking. The shaft diameter will expand too, by about 0.010". The seal material will expand also but under extreme circumstances this expansion can cause the seal to hang-up on the shaft. Over-compression of the elastomers will limit their effectiveness, as well as the other effects mentioned earlier. Material Failure.

Failure of materials is usually a sign of a mis-match of material to environment. The substantial construction of seals excludes major failure of some main component, so we concentrate on the effects of environmental attack on sensitive components.
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Chemical attack on the elastomer will cause it to swell. The carbon will appear pitted. Acid attack on carbon is directed against the impurities. The reaction of the impurities to the acid solution cause holes and pits to form, weakening the structure and producing a porous carbon. A higher grade of carbon is required. The springs can break. Stainless steel is known to fail due to chloride stress corrosion. Many single coil spring driven seals fail because the spring breaks. They are usually in-expensive and over-engineered, but they still fail. Metals corrode. In seals where metal parts are designed to be thin due to flexibility requirements, metal bellows seals, welding techniques used in construction and material compatibility with mating components and pumped fluids are factors that affect the life of a seal. Set screws clamping onto a hardened shaft material will not grip properly, allowing the seal body to slip, leading to a range of other effects, but ultimately to a seal failure. Plated seal faces are not corrosion resistant, so the plating material can be removed from the surface.

This list is not exhaustive however comprehensive it may appear. You will find some new problem and when you do I want to hear all about it. So do all the other guys visiting this site. Look forward to hearing from you, I just know I will in time! Back to the top

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many engineers throughout the world who have contributed to my wealth of knowledge on the issues surrounding the successful application and use of mechanical seals, and I thank them all. Additionally there are a number of publications that have contributed much to the detailed knowledge I have built up over the years. In particular I want to acknowledge the following
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A.W.Chesterton & Co EG & G Sealol (Now part of the John Crane Seals Group) Burgmann Borg-Warner John Crane Seal Co Crane Seals Ltd Seal Pro Inc

All trade marks and official company logos are respected as the property of the originators.

James Merryfield FInstSMM

I trained as a marine engineer with the British Royal Navy and sailed the world in frigates and aircraft carriers. I was responsible for the operation and maintenance of all mechanical equipment in my charge. This included turbo air conditioning units, refrigeration sets, hydraulic equipment, electrical power generators, steam turbine and diesel plant, steam boilers operating in the superheated steam range, and associated main turbine propulsion units. These units include a lot of pumping equipment. For several years I was based ashore at repair yards where my skills were employed to refit and repair pumps of all types. On leaving the Navy in 1980 I studied for a Company Management qualification at Plymouth University and I have used this training to develop a business approach to seal engineering and to provide cost benefit analysis based on financial information relevant to seal operations. I worked for AW Chesterton seal manufacturer from 1982 to 1985 in UK selling into the mining and quarrying industries in SW England, light industry, boiler houses, sewage disposal and treatment and potable water distribution. I won a number of company awards for sales performance. Finding that many engineers needed a design and fitting service for their seal installations I set up an engineering shop to refurbish pumps, re-design stuffing boxes, and rebuild pump units. This became a successful business serving National and Local Government institutions, local industry, and utility companies. 1985-1990 I worked for EG&G Sealol, bellows seal manufacturer, in the Middle East based in Jeddah Saudi Arabia, dealing with Mobil Export Refinery at Yanbu, several Power and Desalination plants(SWCC), and several refineries,

including Shell, at Jubail and ARAMCO at Damman. After preparing a paper on seal trouble shooting for Mobil Oil I was invited to stage a series of lectures to locally employed engineers. Other initiatives resulted in my most successful venture which was to lead to an increase in company turnover in our factory in Kuwait by repairing worn seals for customers. I earned a new yacht from that and sailed half way round the world, but got bored looking at the sea so close up! 1991 I joined Ebara Pump Corporation, Japan. Based in London, my brief was to reorganise the Middle East commercial and customer support operations. Turnover was at a low level after several years of indifferent representation. Installed in the region are some 3500 pump units, ranging from 50mm suction to 2.5 metres suction inlet. Spares logistics were very poorly organised and the engineers had no technical support. Within 3 years I had turnover grossing several million dollars and was programming a doubling of that within a further five years through increased technical support. My aim was the supply of new parts, locally made under licence, and contract maintenance using Ebara trained engineers based in Dubai. In my spare time back in the UK I organised the UK wide sales & distribution of the light engineered range of pressed stainless steel pumps manufactured in Italy. This was accomplished under the direction of the Managing Director, Kamashima. In 1995 I was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Sales & Marketing Managers for my service to the industry. Now (Feb 1998 +) I am running a heavy machine shop repair facility in Oman for the Omani Navy. As a civilian manager I get a fair bit of free time to indulge in such things as my web site, as well as studying for a BSc in Computing. I'm 48, single, and as well as running other people's companies, have enjoyed running my own company and bringing on new employees to achieve more than they expected to themselves. I have 30 men working for me now.

Personal interests include sailing, hiking across Dartmoor, travel, and investing in world stock markets. I own a red car which gets driven very fast.

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