Fluid-Handling Equipment and Its Role in Water Treatment Facilities

City dwellers rarely think about where their water comes from. However, a quick tour of a water treatment facility would open many people's eyes to how water is treated and processed. If you have ever been curious about your water supply and how fluid-handling equipment works in a water treatment facility, the following information should help.

Water Flow Control 

Even though your sewer pipes channel your sewage out and away from your home, the sewage collected from all of the homes in your area is not enough to channel the flow to a treatment facility. The flow control is achieved through a powerful pump system that continues to suck the sewage along and into the treatment plant. Multiple machines create the flow channels inside the facility, through which thousands of gallons of sewage flow. Drains that operate on a vacuum or with the flow of gravity keep the sewage moving from one containment tank to the next and push the sewage through filters.

Centrifugal Pumps in a Waste Facility

Some waste-processing facilities may use centrifugal pumps to process and sort waste faster when there is a higher volume of wastewater. The pumps have more power to push and move the flow of water through the plant. Usually, you will be able to spot these pumps in a treatment facility in a very large metropolitan area.

The Filtration Process

Much in the same way that a septic tank filters out solid waste, so also do the filters in a wastewater treatment facility. Large screen-shaped filters block solid and semi-solid waste from passing through to treatment tanks, which only treat wastewater with urine and/or blood in it. Vomit may also be passed through these filters if it is devoid of any solid pieces, otherwise it is passed along with the excrement into a separate tank for processing.

The Holding Tanks

Once the waste has been sorted through the filtration process, the various types of waste are held in treatment tanks. These large, aqaurium-sized tanks have entry and exit ports for the waste, as well as pipes that distribute chemicals to dissolve and/or neutralize the waste. Liquid waste is cleaned and processed several times and passed from several tanks before it can be released back into the water supply for the town or city. Solid and semi-solid waste spends a long time in the holding tanks, waiting to be broken down and processed before being sent into a leach field or turned into a usable resource.

For further information about fluid-handling equipment, contact a representative from a service like PFC Equipment, Inc.


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