Sewage treatment plants play an important role in places like industries, Apartments, Hotels, Hospitals and also for the entire city. Where large volumes of wastewater are discharged every day.
There are different technologies to treat sewage treatment plants, but in all, the most common thing is the pumps. In most of the treatments plants, there are three stages like primary, secondary and tertiary treatments. There are different types of pumps used in different stages.
In this blog let us look into the raw water sewage pumps roles and how we can avoid them if possible.
Role of Pumps in Wastewater Treatment – Pumps are used to transfer wastewater or sewage water from different locations to the treatment plant from a collection pit. There are plenty of wastewater pumps depending on the application and usage requirements.
Commonly used Types of Wastewater Pumps
Type1: Centrifugal pumps
Type 2: Positive displacement pumps or reciprocating pumps
Centrifugal pumps
As the name implies, these pumps make use of a centrifugal force to create sufficient velocity to displace the fluid through the system. Centrifugal pumps come with rotating impellers. These are parts that resemble a mechanical fan. It has a small intake and a large outlet.
Advantages of centrifugal pump for wastewater treatments:
- Simple design that makes it practical to operate
- The moving parts are highly durable, ensuring that your pumps last for a long time
- Require minimal maintenance.
Positive Displacement Pumps
These pumps make use of rollers, gears, impellers to displace fluid through the system. They are highly durable and can pump both liquids and slurries with lots of solid particles. The most popular type of positive displacement pump is the diaphragm pump. The pumps have a chamber and a diaphragm membrane and are fitted with discharge valves.
Reciprocating pumps are much less employed these days for sewage pumping, because of their high initial cost, difficulty in maintenance and greater wear and tear of valves. These pumps are ideal where it is required to deal with difficult sludges and where a large quantity of sewage is to be pumped against low heads.
Reciprocating pumps are usually of two types:
(1) Ram type and
(2) Propeller type.
We saw the different types of pumps used for transporting sewage, however, let us look at how we can avoid using sewage treatment plants.
In the case of industries where the space is huge the sewage treatment plants are set up far away from the premises the sewage has to be pumped from different places like the boys & girls hostel, office premises so it is advisable to use raw sewage pumps in those places. Avoid raw sewage pump by directly connecting to the sewage treatment plant if there is a good height and the sewage can flow directly.
In the case of Apartments, Hotels and commercial places the available space is less and the sewage treatment plants are located very close to the premises. In such places, the sewage can be directly let into the sewage treatment plants. Avoid raw sewage pumps, as raw sewage pumps are prone to get repaired and have to be maintained well.
Editor-in-chief
Arun Karunakaran
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