Gippsland Water eliminates pump blockages at Morwell WWTP

Gippsland Water provides water and wastewater services to the Gippsland Region of Victoria. At its Morwell Waste Water Treatment Plant, Gippsland Water has used two Gorman Rupp Ultra V series 3″ pumps as the inlet works pumps for the plant.

The reason why Gippsland Water selected the Gorman-Rupp Eradicator upgrade kit for this project: until December 2020, the inlet works had a muncher prior to the pump suction lines. Following multiple position changes and two catastrophic failures, the last being the bottom bearing failing, which resulted in one side slipping down and chewing out all the teeth, the decision was made to remove the muncher entirely from the inlet works. This meant the Ultra V series pumps were now being used to pump unscreened raw sewage. The first 12 months saw a total of 114 blockages across the two pumps, roughly 2.2 blockages per week with the inlet pump closest to the forebay inlet accounting for 64% of those blockages. The added vibrations caused by the raged-up pumps eventually led to cracking in the welds of the inlet pipework, so the plant technician, Scott Kitwood, reached out to Hydro Innovations’ Regional Manager, Graeme Spence, looking for a solution.

The solution

The Ultra V series pump along with the Super T series pumps can be retrofitted with Gorman Rupp’s patented Eradicator solids management system.

The team at Gippsland Water took the opportunity to retrofit an Eradicator upgrade kit to the inlet pump with its suction line closest to the wet well inlet. Nine weeks after installation, the pump only experienced one blockage, almost completely reducing blockages.

The results

The plant operator said that since having the upgrade installed in Pump 1 during September 2023, they have left Pump 1 as the duty pump and have not experienced any pump blockages.

“Prior to the upgrade we would notice in the trends that the pump speed would drop off on occasion (due to ragging and the VSD protecting the pump), which would happen multiple times a day. This has since only happened once in the two weeks it has been running.

“As you may be aware, in early October, Gippsland was hit with extreme rainfall. There have also been two smaller events in November and December. There is a lot of data from the October event as well as the continued recovery and return to normal phase for each event over the past three months. However, the standout fact is that not once during the high inflow periods did Inlet Pump 1 fail or rag up, nor was there any reduction in flow or pump speed. This is an amazing outcome with multiple benefits; we are very pleased with the outcome and will look to upgrade the second pump in the near future.”