What would cause your centrifugal pump to start but then stop pumping? James Farley, Senior Director of Product Management for Griswold, reviews the likely causes of this problem and ways to fix it in the latest edition of the Centrifugal Pump Minute.

There’s also an opportunity for a system to begin operating, but then it’s going to stop pumping and this could be again just a frame what this is referring to. You have a pump and it’s operating valves are open and flow the pump it in the system initially sees flow through the pump and through the system, but then for some reason, the flow stops through the pump.

The first area that you would want to look at here is the pump losing its prime and so it’s possible that you’re getting there’s a pocket of air in the suction piping that maybe it pulled some fluid through but then that pocket of air got into the pump and now the pump is no longer primed. If that’s the case you need to look at re-priming your pump and you might need to also look at the suction piping as well make sure that there is no area in the suction piping that would allow an accumulation of air that could be sizeable that could cause the pump to drop out of prime when the pump is sitting idle.

You may need to do some revision to your suction line. But you can also see that there are air and vapor in the suction line I know what I mentioned there if your piping has a high point that can accumulate air at least review that piping and potentially you might need to put a vent on it so you can vent that air out or essentially just remove that high point that allows the air to accumulate. Then you could have some other air leak that’s in the suction line. It could be a leak or a gasket or a valve that’s allowing a significant amount of air to get sucked into the suction piping and this could cause the pump to fall out of its prime when it’s operating.

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