Pumping Horse Hair

[JRLAKE]

Does anyone have experience pumping long hair with a centrifugal pump? I suspect a macerator or grinder pump is needed but I am still skeptical that this will work. Seems to me that anything which happens to be rotating will fail.

Flow is 7000 GPD with 30' of discharge head.

 

[Unotec]

Have you looked into recessed impellers? Low efficiency but I think that'd be your least concern

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[hydtools]

Vortex impeller pump. Fluid or waste does not flow through the impeller. Like Unotec said.

http://www.flygtus.com/115184.asp

Ted

 

[Artisi]

I would agree that a recessed impeller pump is probably the way to go, but for sizing you need to specify the flow rate in GPM or similar with an uper/lower limit, ie 5/10GPM for 15 minutes periods.

What is consistency of hair within the pumped flow?

Have you tried pumping this material as yet - if yes, any results / feedback would be helpful.

 

[JRLAKE]

This is a sump pump application at a large horse hospital outside Baltimore MD. They are currently using grinder pumps. It's hard to estimate a maximum consistency, but I would guess after seeing the area that it could get as high as 25% hair. The current system (two pumps in parallel) is sized for 300 GPM.

Some want to try a Franklin Miller macerator. The obvious problem is we have to pump through it. I had thought of a vortex pump, but thought I should check here first to see if anyone had actual experience with this application. I also have concerns about the macerator clogging. That horse hair is surprisingly very strong.

My gut tells me they are barking up the wrong tree and that their efforts would be better spent keeping the hair out of the sumps. Again, I was hoping someone had treed this coon already.

 

[Artisi]

What is wrong with the grinder pumps already in use - do they work, do they clog?

Some back ground info might go a long way in getting you some usable answers.

 

[JRLAKE]

Sorry Artisi. Again I was hoping someone had tackled this before and we wouldn't have to think our way through this. But you're correct, you need more info.

Basically the hair is winding around and locking the rotor. It finds its way behind the impeller and winds around the shaft. It also has wound around the OD of the impeller and impeller lock nut. Basically it's hair ball chaos resulting in a locked rotor due to reduced clearances and resulting contact between the shaft or impeller and casing.

The grinder pump, I assume, is designed to grind bulky solids, not hair. I strongly suspect a macerator will also fail for the same reasons. Just looking for a warm fuzzy from someone that's tried a macerator and vortex pump with hair, because the vendors aren't pulling it off.

 

[hydtools]

Here is an article I found that may help decide:

http://www.pumped101.com/vortex pumps.pdf

Ted

 

[Artisi]

I have posted a link from you on a special impeller,
"shearpeller" this is from the old Allis Chalmers pump range (now Goulds) and was available in a number of different pump styles - (you can ignore the pump designation as I have just copied from the first model I came across).

This is probably not available in a small enough size for your project but there is no reason why you couldn't make a smaller version to suit youur application, alternately pump at higher volumes a couple of times a day with a larger pump - one of the problems with long fibres etc are pumps running at lower flow than design and not having sufficient flow and therefore a lot of the flow recirculates round and round meaning that the chance of being hung-up or caught somewhere in the pump are greatly increased.

Shearpeller will certainly overcome chockage/ blockage on the inlet side of the pump and wrapping round the OD. Behind the impeller is always a problem and I'm not sure how to overcome the problem, it is always a trial and error approach - 1 solution might be have pump-out vanes on the rear of the impeller and to have balance holes thru' the impeller, this gives you inlet pressure behing the impeller and the pump out vanes will ensure flow behind the impeller - a reasonable back clearance might also help.

A bit of a ramble - more ideas for you than tried and proven solutions - but these problems are never easy to cure - sometimes they are uncurable.

http://www.gouldspumps.com/download_files/CW/BCW_CWX.pdf

 

[Unotec]

Well... if you can help it, do keep as much hair from getting into the sumps as possible, as you mention. This will aid any pumping device you end up with.

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[Compositepro]

Also consider that once you have gotten the hair succesfully past the pump it will create a problem somewhere else. It would be best the remove the hair as early as possible and handle it as solid waste.

 

[Artisi]

If pre-treatment is an option look at the following link

http://www.jwce.com/products/detail.asp?id=2

 

[SteveWag]

Pneumatic Ejector, no impeller!

Steve