General Product Overview

Plow clarifiers are the most material cost effective method of manufacturing center drive circular clarifier mechanisms. The best applications are in “Primary” settling basins where the settling sludge is not alive or active so transportation time to the sludge hopper critical, and usually the sludge is heaver and easier to move in the direction the plows are directing the sludge. In activated waste settling small plow clarifiers (less than 50 ft. diameter) are effective because normal tip speed (10 ft/min or less) is fast enough that the mechanism makes several revolutions per hour, thus moving the sludge from the perimeter of the basin to the hopper in less than an hour. This provides minimal deterioration to the biological mass due to the absence of oxygen and food provided only in the aeration or mix liquor basins. Wall mounted full surface scum removal in activated sludge applications are also easily applied to small diameter clarifiers.

Trying to apply a plow mechanism of the larger diameter verity (90ft plus) to an activated sludge settling basin and trying to achieve rapid sludge removal creates many problems with both sludge collection and scum removal. Many modifications are usually required including conical shaped floors requiring deeper excavation, spiral collector blades, submerged fixed sludge headers with multiple suction orifices that are inaccessible and can become plugged, and operating at higher than recommended tip speeds that is disturbing to an unstable sludge blanket. These modifications increase equipment manufacturing and basin structural costs to similar costs of a true rapid sludge removal clarifier such as Enviroquip’s “SS Style” suction clarifiers.

Benefits/Features

• Available in 304 or 316 stainless
• Corrosion and maintenance free
• Box truss design will all members designed for both axial tension and compression
• Large diameter inlet wells – up to 25% of the total surface area
• Deep inlet wells to increase time for flocculation and decrease short circuiting possibility
• Fabricated weirs, troughs and baffles can be provided for all clarifier models
• Multiple blade or spiral flight scrapers can be provided for primary and secondary applications
• Custom engineered for each application
• A wide variety of methods are available for skimming and scum removal including full surface skimming, ramp type systems and ducking skimmers

Applications

• Lends themselves to efficient stainless steel construction
• Small diameter activated sludge clarification
• Primary clarification