Monthly Archives: June 2020

Commercial Applications for Screw Pumps

Open and enclosed screw pumps are used in a variety of settings. They’re often found in wastewater treatment plants where they move sludge and fluids that travel in through sewer lines or from hauled septage. Screw pumps are also helpful in commercial applications, though people don’t always stop to think of the benefits of screw pumps in a commercial setting. Here are five commercial applications for screw pumps.

Beverage Industry

The beverage industry is the perfect example of a commercial business that benefits from screw pumps. Breweries, wineries, kombucha, canned/bottled coffee, and other beverage companies can move liquids around without damaging other components in the recipe. As screw pumps require little maintenance and have the option of a Sealed Precision Type “E” bearing assembly that has a sealed bearing that doesn’t require a grease pump or grease lines that could leak over time and contaminate the liquids the screw pump is moving.

For example, beer is made by heating crushed grains (malts) with water. The liquid sits to extract the malt and must be separated. Using a screw pump, the liquids and grains are separated. Grains can go to farms as livestock feed. The remaining liquid is boiled and flavoring hops are added in stages. That mixture cools and yeast must be carefully added. As you add the liquid yeast mixture, a screw pump can control the speed so that it’s evenly mixed. Kombucha and wine are also beverages that are fermented and may benefit from a screw pump.

In winemaking, a screw pump can move fluid. It also moves the denser items like the dregs that include grape skins and seeds. The screw pushes the dregs to a container and the remaining liquid is piped to fermentation vats.

Screw pumps can also be used in a large kombucha plant. The screw pump can help during the step where tea leaves are removed from the tea right before the tea mixed with the culture that grows the SCOBY for fermentation. After the kombucha is moved to a cooling vessel and flowers, herbs, and other flavoring ingredients are added, you could also use a screw pump as it’s moved to kegs for carbonation.

Chemical Plants and Oil Refineries

While centrifugal pumps have been considered the normal option for a chemical plant, screw pumps are ideal. One of the leading reasons is to keep costs down. Screw pumps are designed to handle liquids of different viscosities. A centrifugal pump has to lower the flow rate when pressure increases. That requires constant adjustment to prevent problems. Screw pumps don’t need to make these adjustments, so you’ll save time and money. If you look at some of the flow rates of Lakeside Equipment’s different screw pumps, you’ll see the variation.

  • An open screw pump can handle 90 gallons up to 55,000 gallons per minute.
  • A Type C enclosed screw pump can handle 540 gallons to 35,000 gallons per minute.
  • A Type S enclosed screw pump can handle 90 gallons to 10,000 gallons per minute.

Screw pumps are proving to be the best choice in the oil and gas industry. With more viscous crude oil coming in from countries like Canada, Latin America, and South America, it can take more work to move the oil from reservoirs to oil pipelines. With other styles of pumps, pressure changes required the pumps to be adjusted by the operator to prevent problems. Screw pumps can do this efficiently as they can handle different viscosities and changing pressures with ease. To maximize production, it’s important to work with an expert to help find the best type of screw pump for your refinery.

Food Processing

How could a screw pump be useful in food processing? When food processing requires delicate speeds to prevent over-mixing or adding items too quickly, a screw pump is ideal. A canning company needs to get diced tomatoes into a canning line without pumping the tomatoes so quickly that the tomato pieces get broken down. That’s one area where a screw pump is helpful. It moves the tomato mixture at the right speed to prevent damage to the tomatoes. Steady flow rates keep lines running effectively without much need for maintenance, which boosts productivity.

A cheese manufacturing plant is another example. Milk is trucked to the plant and pumped into the storage tanks before pasteurization. To make the cheese, the curds and whey have to separate. After this happens, whey is pumped away and curds move to the machinery that shapes them into a block or round of cheese. Throughout this process, screw pumps help move liquids or curds to the next step in cheesemaking.

Screw pumps can also help move the whey that’s left behind. Liquid whey is used for animal feed. Whey can be dried into a powder and used as a protein supplement and in baby food. It can be used in bakeries or added to foods like soups and salad dressings. Whey protein powder is a hot commodity, but you need an effective way to pump it to the tanks where it’s stored until it’s needed.

Paper Mills

The pulp and paper industry requires several screw pumps throughout the process. At the very beginning of the process, wood is stripped of its bark and chopped into tiny fragments that are soaked in a mixture of water and chemicals to help digest it. The resulting pulp has to have most of the liquid removed before it moves to bleaching and washing. After washing, a new round of water removal takes place. The pulp goes through a refining process before heading to the paper making presses and drying area. Each new step that requires the separation of liquids benefits from a screw pump.

Eventually, the resulting liquid (liquor) has to be purified. The water left over after paper is made often go into ponds or tanks that use aeration to add oxygen and help with the water treatment process before it returns to bodies of water. The remaining sludge is often sent to incinerators.

Theme Parks

Theme parks across the country rely on screw pumps. Any theme park with a water ride needs a way to get water to the top of a ride or slide where it can plummet down the slide or track to the pool below. A screw pump is effective at moving large amounts of water continually. If you think about water parks where there are log rides in a flume, a screw pump is good at bringing water from the pool back up to the top of the ride over and over. The same is true of water slides and water rides where riders either use an inflatable tube or ride through the slide chute independently. If the water stops flowing, the ride goes wrong. It’s important to have low-maintenance screw pumps moving water non-stop from the bottom to the top.

Lakeside Equipment offers both enclosed and open screw pumps. Our first designs go back to the 1960s and have seen many improvements over the decades. With more than 50 years of expertise, we specialize in clog-free designs. You’ll work with an experienced team to match both your budget and specifications. Trust in us to design a screw pump for your industrial setting.

Screw Pumps for Sludge – How They Work and What You Should Look For

Screw pumps are designed to move liquids, solids, or liquid-solid combinations from one area to another. It’s a simplistic, yet effective, way to push liquids, sludge, grains, and other items along a chute or tube without clogging. Lakeside screw pumps operate at a constant speed, which lowers the chances of the machine needing maintenance or wearing out, making them a cost-effective piece of equipment. While these pumps can handle most everyone, one area where they’re very effective is pumping sludge.

Original Screw Pumps Go Back to Ancient Egypt

How do screw pumps work? One of the original uses of a screw pump was for agriculture and drainage. The screw pump set in water in a low-lying area and the top collection area sat in a higher area. As that screw twisted, water collected in the spiral tube and moved upwards to the collection area at the top. That brought water from a lower area like a river up a bank or slope to the garden beds or fields above.

The Egyptian Screw is believed to be the first screw pump and it was used to move water from the Nile River up the banks and to the villages and fields. While people know screw pumps as Archimedes screw pumps, evidence that Archimedes had any part of the invention is sparse. The pump was around for two centuries before Archimedes’ name is mentioned.

One of the first major uses of the Archimedes pump was in the 1600s when the Dutch used them to move water through dikes and canals. Windmills powered the screw pump bringing water from one section to another.

To understand how they work, imagine a long screw that’s sitting inside a straw. The bottom of that screw sits in a water-filled sink or basin. There’s a second bowl on the counter. The screw is turned at a steady speed. The threads of the screw are designed so that they hold liquid. As the screw turns, water collects in the threads of the screw and the upward movement of the screw pushes the water up the straw. The straw’s walls trap that water from escaping out of the bottom. Eventually, water propels to the top of the straw where it spills into the upper chamber.

What Factors You Should Weigh When Choosing a Screw Pump

A screw pump can move more than water. They can move oil and other viscous liquids like sludge. Sludge is a combination of fluids and solids that forms a thicker material like mud. Most sludge brought to water treatment plants comes from residential and business septic tanks where it’s pumped out and transported through trucks, but it can come from a variety of other sources. In an agricultural setting, screw pumps can move grains from a truck to a storage container. Sludge can also come from food and beverage plants like breweries, wineries, and dairy processors.

This is important when it comes to purchasing a screw pump. You need equipment that matches your intended use. Consider these factors when you’re buying a screw pump for sludge.

Open vs. Closed Screw Pumps

The screw pumps at Lakeside Equipment can be open or closed. This is important to understand as it can make a difference when you finalize your choice.

Open screw pumps sit in a trough that’s made of steel or concrete. The trough is open at the top, which exposes the spiral screw to the environment. The bearings are protected in a sealed sleeve or have a lubricating system that helps prevent wear whether they’re submerged or not. The trough needs to be at an angle of 22 to 40 degrees for the screw pump to work effectively. Given that incline, you do need a substantial amount of space when setting up this type of screw pump.

What are the advantages of an open screw pump? They can handle variable capacities without needing additional controls to manage the variation. They are efficient and don’t clog. There’s no need for pre-screening the sludge you get. Maintenance is low, and you don’t need a wet well to operate them.

What about enclosed screw pumps? There are two types: Type C or Type S. Both of these screw pumps are housed within a tube. A Type C is in a tube that can rotate. Type S’s tube is stationary. Type C is best if you need higher lifts than an open screw pump. It also requires less space as it can be installed to have a maximum incline of 45 degrees. Type S can pivot to keep up with changes in the pumping rate. It requires more space with an incline range of 22 to 40 degrees.

Benefits to enclosed screw pumps include higher efficiency with Type C. If the pump needs replacing, you can simply have the new pump dropped into place, which makes replacement much more affordable. With an open system, concrete and grout are needed. Enclosed screw pumps require no costly grouting or concrete work.

Flow Rate

How quickly do you need sludge moved? How thick is that sludge? Flow rates vary, and you need to make sure that the screw pump you choose can move the sludge as quickly as you need it moved. At the same time, look at the PSI and horsepower to make sure the system is going to work efficiently for you. We can help you with open screw pumps that move as little as 90 gallons a minute to as much as 55,000 gallons a minute. If you need an enclosed screw pump, the Type S is capable of 90 to 10,000 gallons per minute, and Type C handle 540 to 35,000 gallons per minute.

Size

How much room do you have? If you’re in a tight space, not every screw pump will work. When space is limited, the inclination of that screw pump needs to work with the available square footage. Imagine you have a screw pump that If you have plenty of room for the screw pump’s installation, you will have more options.

The open screw pumps manufactured by Lakeside Equipment range in size from 12 inches in diameter all the way to 144 inches. Enclosed screw pumps are available in 12 to 60 inches (Type S) and 24 to 120 inches (Type C). When you talk to our engineers, we’ll help you understand the pros and cons of open vs. closed screw pumps and which best suits your needs.

Durability

You’re spending money on a new or replacement screw pump. You want a system that’s designed to last. You want to get your money’s worth and that means a system that’s not going to require a lot of maintenance and upkeep. The screw pumps at Lakeside are designed to reduce friction that damages the screw pump’s parts. Very little maintenance is required to keep the screw pumps working like new.

Lakeside Equipment’s customer service team and engineers are ready to help you design and purchase the right screw pumps for sludge. Our screw pumps are made in the USA and give you the flexibility of open or closed designs. If you’re looking to replace or upgrade your equipment or are installing a brand new system, give us a call. We have decades of expertise that ensures you get the best system for your money.

How Lakeside’s Rotary Strainer Screens Are Used in Industrial Applications

Lakeside Equipment’s rotary strainer screens are used in far more than just wastewater treatment applications.  One area where Lakeside Equipment’s rotary strainer screens come in very handy is the food and beverage industry. A rotary strainer screen is often thought of as being an essential part of wastewater processing. It’s even more useful in breweries, beverage/coffee plants, and food processing plants. Beyond that, this equipment helps the fuel industry. If you have a liquid that needs to have all particles filtered out before reaching consumers, rotary strainer screens are an important part of the process.

How Rotary Screens Work

Lakeside’s rotary strainer screen is a self-contained unit crafted from stainless steel, which helps prevent corrosion. If you work with an acidic liquid like coffee, wine, kombucha, or hard cider, corrosion prevention is important. It’s designed to be installed on a concrete slab or an elevated structure if you need the equipment to be off the ground. Lakeside Equipment’s engineers can help you come up with the ideal design for your business.

The liquid is pumped in through the back of the rotary strainer where it flows through a rotary screen cylinder. The wire screening removes particles ranging in size from 0.10 inches all the way down to 0.010 inches After the particles are screened, the liquid continues to pipes that travel out through the bottom.

The solid particles that are caught on the screen are then scraped from the screen cylinder using a doctor blade assembly that adjusts using the blade tensioner. The solids are discharged through the chute on the front of the machine. An internal spray bar also helps keep the doctor blade and screening clear. Controls on the machine are automated, which makes it easy for your workers to operate.

What you do next with the solids depends on your food or beverage. Brewers can send spent grains to farms where they become feed for cattle and other farm animals. You could compost the leftover solids. Some may need to go to a landfill. The filtered liquid moves on to the next stage in your business. You might be sending the liquids to a tank, bottling line, or packaging area.

How Will Your Industry Benefit From Rotary Strainer Screens?

Many industries benefit from rotary strainer screens. When you have foods, fuels, or liquids that need to be screened to remove particles or contaminants, a screening system is perfect. Here are examples of different industries where a rotary strainer screen can be extremely useful.

When making beer, water and grains steep in a process called mash conversion, which breaks down starch from the malts into sugar. The malts have to be removed for the next step. A rotary strainer screen is perfect for this step and again when removing the hops before moving the wort into fermentation tanks.

The same is true of other beverages that have to be strained before fermentation, such as hard cider, cold brew coffee that’s canned for sale, and kombucha. Kombucha that has added ginger root, chai spices, or berries can be filtered using a rotary strainer screen. Once the kombucha is filtered, it travels to the bottling line before heading to stores or farmer’s markets.

A winery can use the rotary screening to remove grape skin, flesh, and seeds from the must (liquid pressed from the grapes). That must moves into fermentation tanks where yeast is added and the grape juice ferments. After fermentation ends, wine is moved to barrels for aging. If you produce hard cider, you’ll find the screens remove hops, spices, and other additions that you use for flavoring.

Do you can the cold brew coffee or bottle the iced tea you produce? Once the cold water and coffee grounds or tea have steeped, continue the process by having a rotary strainer screen remove the grounds or tea leaves. The tea or coffee continues to a bottling or canning line, but the filtered materials can go into a compost where it becomes beneficial to gardens.

Some poultry processing plants have found rotary strainer screens to be helpful when it comes to processing. During processing, poultry is continually cleaned using scalding water. That scalder produces the water that sprays poultry during feather removal and removing the innards. The scalding water collects all kinds of debris, which can be removed using a rotary strainer screen. Because the water is kept cleaner, the poultry is cleaner when it goes through inspections and packaging. This can keep costs down as you won’t use as much water as you would having to run poultry through several cycles of cleaning.

To make sugar, sugar cane is shredded and juice is extracted. That juice has to be screened to make sure fibrous material from the sugar cane doesn’t remain in the mixture when it goes to the heaters and surge or flash tanks before moving to evaporators where the remaining crystals are dried and become the sugar people see in stores. Other aspects of a sugar plant, such as making molasses, also use the rotary strainer screen to remove pulp. If you’re in the sugar beet processing industry, the same methods are put to use. In this case, the sugar beet pulp can be used to feed animals like horses.

Fuels like oil or gas cannot have any debris. If items like small metal shavings, dirt, or grit get into the fuel, it can clog lines and cause engine damage. Water is another issue. Chemical additions can help remove water from fuel or oil. Water’s removed and the rotary strainer takes out any particles before the fuel is bottled or moved into storage tanks.

Lakeside Equipment Can Help You

Lakeside Equipment started in 1928 to help towns and cities come up with water purification measures. We’ve expanded around the world. Our equipment is designed to last while helping you process whatever liquids your industry is responsible for producing. Whether you’re a brewery owner or produce oil for the automotive industry, our screening equipment helps you get the job done right every time.

How can Lakeside’s rotary strainer screens fit into your industrial applications? It all depends on your needs. Give us a call and tell us what needs screening. We’ll help you with your options and come up with the right design and installation.