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Pro tip: I saw a dredge in Mobile Bay using a 3-inch suction line for a sandbar job and it was painfully slow.
The operator told me he was saving on fuel, but the pump was cavitating every 15 minutes. Anyone run into this trying to cut corners on line size?
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mason28312d ago
What was the actual pump size and engine on that dredge? A three inch line needs a pretty small pump to match it, so if he had a bigger pump throttled way back, that setup is basically asking for cavitation no matter what.
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sean_foster5212d ago
Was he maybe confusing cavitation with something else? That sounds more like the line was plugging up from oversized material. A three-inch line on a sandbar is awfully small, and the constant stopping would burn more fuel in the long run trying to restart the system.
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