Cleaning Sequence Counters Clogging: A Quantitative Assessment Under Real Operation Conditions of a Wastewater Pump

Abstract

Wastewater pumps show a high tendency to failures due to clogging by textiles and fibrous material as constituents of wastewater. High costs for manual cleaning and operational safety concerns create a high pressure for action for operators of wastewater pumping systems. An adaption of the existing wastewater system using different pumping technologies, retrofitting screening facilities, macerators or grinders is very costly with indistinct success. The implementation of operational approaches, i.e. counter measures embedded in the control system, are therefore preferable for all operators. In Berlin a so-called Cleaning Sequence was tested in a field test in close cooperation with the local operator Berliner Wasserbetriebe. For the implementation a large wastewater pumping station was selected where the large wastewater pumps show a high number of clogging events while being crucial for operational safety during peak-load. For a 3 month testing campaign 53 clogging events were countered using the Cleaning Sequence. For 89 percent of the cases the cleaning effect was sufficient and no further manual removal of clogging material was necessary.