Case Studies
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WHEN RAG BECOMES A DRAG…THE CHOICE IS A CHOPPER PUMP
Heavily laden unscreened sewage containing rag was blocking existing pumps at a Severn Trent Water pumping station, near the SinFin Golf Course in Derby. Vaughan Chopper Pumps were trialled with complete success.
4 months later and following 700 hours of operation, no blockages have occurred, even after storm flows and high volumes of ragging.
Watch Severn Trent Waters own producedvideo, click the"play" button on the video to the left. |
Through their experiences at numerous UK water sites, P&M Pumps
have demonstrated that their products and expertise can bring significant
cost-savings. In most cases retrofitting Vaughan Chopper pumps in
the correct areas to deal effectively with the process, can be self-financing,
with payback periods of less than one year, thereafter minimising
the effect to budget holders.
Here we highlight just a few examples.
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Chopper Pumps help Southern Water to
cut costs
Achieving significant improvement in the throughput of sludge
combined with minimising reactive maintenance and the frequent
need to purchase spares, were the important benefits achieved
at a key Southern Water site, thanks to the
installation of Vaughan Chopper Pumps and mixing
systems, supplied by P&M Pumps. The site,
a key element in Southern Water’s sludge strategy, serves
a sludge catchment of approx 600,000 people and uses Mesophilic
digestion and a thermal drying plant which needs to operate
on a 24/7 basis. |
| Equipment includes 3 digester recirculation pumps,
2 post digestion storage tank Rotamix mixing systems, 2 belt
thickener discharge pumps and 1 tanker discharge submersible
pump. Commenting on the performance of the Vaughan Chopper pumps,
Mark Catlin, Southern Water Senior Process Engineer says, ‘Installing
the Vaughan equipment has made a significant improvement to
asset availability and a large reduction in this sites operational
costs’. |
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Chopper Pumps go through the Motions at Anglian Water
Another successful installation of Vaughan ‘Chopper’
pumps, supplied by P&M Pumps, has resulted in a significant
reduction in the problems which were caused by pump blockages
that were occurring at an Anglian Water Services Pumping Station,
in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
The Hartford Road Pump Station in Huntingdon is one of a number
of facilities within the Anglian Water Region where raw domestic
and industrial effluent is collected and processed, with raw
sewage being transferred within a dry-well pumping application.
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Problems arose, when during high flow conditions,
the original pumps became blocked with fibrous rag material
and other flotsam contained in the sewage streams. These problems
were particularly severe when storm conditions occurred which
led to sewage streams backing-up, causing spillage and flooding.
Blockages were an on-going problem, with around 2 to 4 pump
failures a week during extreme conditions, resulting in high
maintenance and labour costs.
The Hartford Road pumping station has been operating for 2
years without the need for any unscheduled visits due to pump
failures. In addition the hydraulic performance of the Vaughan
pumps exactly meets the target flows set by Anglian Water,
with no drop in performance. Commenting on the pump’s
performance, Mick Tomblin, Site Engineer at Hartford Road
said, “We have overcome all of the operational problems
we were experiencing, pump failures due to ragging etc. have
been eliminated and we appreciate the pump’s ability
to handle rag matter easily and efficiently”. He added,
“P&M Pumps offered a guarantee from the outset that
these pumps would not block and they have proven reliable
within a very difficult application”.
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CHOPPER PUMPS IMPROVE
SCREENING TRANSFER PROCESS
The ability for pumps to operate efficiently, even
when storm surges and unusually high flows occur, is
an essential requirement in many water, waste and effluent
treatment applications. Critical periods are when high
flows and storm surges result in an increase in rag
or other heavy debris which can cause pump failure resulting
in expensive downtime. This situation was one of the
factors leading to the reengineering and upgrading of
an Anglian Water pumping station facility, which included
the installation of Vaughan ‘Chopper’ pumps,
supplied and installed by Huntingdon based P&M Pumps.
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The Anglian Water One Alliance facility at Garrison Road,
Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, collects raw domestic and industrial
effluent prior to treatment, as part of its screening and
transfer process from pumping station to works. A Vaughan
auto self-priming SP10R Chopper pump was supplied and installed
by P&M Pumps for transferring rag matter from a collection
sump adjacent to a storm screen into a gravity main leading
to the local sewage treatment works. Prior to the upgrade,
Anglian Water had relied upon maceration and this lacked the
required performance, for example, falling short of the flow
targets required for the transfer process.
Commenting on the installation and subsequent pumping performance,
Graham Rose, the Site Engineer at Garrison Road confirmed,
‘The operational problems we were experiencing with
maceration within the transfer process have been eliminated,
thanks to the Vaughan Chopper pump’.
He continued, ‘The pumps ability to handle rag
matter easily and efficiently was crucial to our selection
and an added bonus is that the pump does not macerate solids
and rags, it only chops what it need to chop to stop the pump
from clogging’.
Graham concluded, ‘The pumps performance has provided
the benefit down stream as inlet screens can now remove far
more material than the previous system allowed’.
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