Why water pump is not suitable for a 2.5/5 metric ton LPG skid plant

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• Author: Muyiwa Ige(LPG Stakeholder and Consultant)

Some 1MT/1.5MT/2MT/2.5MT/3.5MT/5MT LPG Skid Plant owners, in a bid to cut cost, allow their LPG Plant installers to install water pump, in the place of an LPG pump, in their cooking gas Skid Plants.

This unfavorable practice is quite rampant across the country.

Although the practice appears to make some economic sense in the short-term, it usually turns out as an economic mistake and results in wastages and operational losses, in the long-term.

Shortages

The water pump was not constructed to pump high pressure fluids like liquefied petroleum gas.

Therefore, it will perform woefully when pumping gas, most especially when the volume of gas in the gas tank drops below 35%.

At 10% gas level, the performance of the water pump will be very poor, with the severity depending on the distance between the water pump’s inlet(suction) and the LPG tank’s outlet.

In essence, the water pump will fail to suck out all the liquid gas in the tank, leading to some shortages for the LPG Skid Plant owner.

LPG Dispenser Malfunction

With its weak impeller and low capacity electric motor, the water pump will not deliver the optimum volume of liquid gas to the dispenser.

The implication of this is that the volume of gas delivered will contain more gas vapor than is required, which will make the LPG Dispenser to under-dispense liquid gas into the customers’ cylinders.

This will make the gas of the plant’s customers to get exhausted before the normal duration, thereby eroding the confidence of the customers and resulting in severe loss of patronage for the gas station.