The decision to replace piston pumps – which are prone to abrasive wear and clogging – with Bredel APEX 20 peristaltic pumps from Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group (WMFTG) resulted in significant process improvements at a water treatment plant in Limoges, France.
Established in 1967 and modernised in 1998, the plant supplies 10.5 million m³ of drinking water each year to the city’s 200,000 inhabitants.
The plant uses traditional physico-chemical processes, which means that in order to produce clean water for drinking, reagents such as ferric chloride, an inorganic iron-based coagulant, must be injected. It is at this stage that the deployment of the correct dosing pumps is vital.
The treatment phases at the Limoges plant are of a naturally gravity-fed type. As a result, the dosing pumps must take control and be impervious to the effects of gravity. There can be no siphoning of lines, or pump blockages, as the chemical overshoot that results could be extremely expensive.
After several months of testing with Bredel APEX 20 hose pumps for flocculants, the plant was equipped with 12 APEX pumps.
There are no longer any problems with pump reliability and dosing accuracy, or with blocked pipelines and ruptures. Additionally all the valves in the system have been eliminated, further decreasing plant downtime and running costs at Limoges water treatment plant.
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