It’s oh-so-quiet at the Mahanoy City Wastewater Treatment Plant in Pennsylvania. Unless you’d been told otherwise, you wouldn’t know that close by, a 36 inch diameter pump is operating night and day in a giant concreted basin.
And even when one of the two larger screw pumps (84” diameter) is also being put through its paces, remarkably there’s still a kind of a hush.
With the town’s school district just 300 feet away, this very well-run treatment plant is a good neighbour.
Fail and replacement
Today, the original 36” diameter raw sewage enclosed screw pump, which had become increasing unreliable, failed twice, ultimately giving the plant operators no option but to look for a more sturdy and efficient alternative. The heavy-duty enclosed Type C screw pump from Lakeside Equipment Corporation was chosen – a design with two convoluted flights that are welded to the rotating outer tube, with the lower bearing mounted above water level.
Designed for trouble-free operation, with options for either an open or enclosed design, Lakeside Screw Pumps lift large quantities of water or wastewater at low heads for applications such as return activated sludge or storm water pumping. The Open Design consists of the spiral screw, upper and lower bearings and a drive arrangement, using a tube and spiral flights set in an open, inclined trough that permits both simplicity and reliability.
