To prepare for future residential and commercial growth, Indiana-based Lebanon Utilities reported Apr. 19 that it’s improving its wastewater treatment infrastructure, starting by upgrading a lift station with two of Tsurumi Pump’s FM-rated Avant MQC Chopper pumps that operate smoothly and reduce callouts. These FM-rated pumps offer multiple impeller options and horsepower ratings from 4 hp to 215 hp, while the Avant line can handle flows up to 14,000 gpm.
Located about 30 minutes northwest of Indianapolis, Lebanon is already home to nearly 17,000 residents, and will soon welcome 800 new homes. Plus, a major pharmaceutical company has started construction of a new manufacturing campus in the area. This growth will require several more lift stations, and Lebanon Utilities is already gearing up for it. The utility presently has 17 stations, with two more under construction. It plans to increasing to 40 over the next decade. A recent expansion project has already expanded flow by 1.5 million gal/day to deliver a design capacity of 3.4 million gal/day.
Lebanon Utilities reports that it upgraded a problematic duplex lift station in June 2022 with two Avant MQC Choppers, resulting in trouble-free performance since installation, and time and money savings due to reduced callouts. “We’re trying to be proactive, so I’m excited to order a third unit that will serve as a backup pump,” says Cameron Kearney, wastewater supervisor at Lebanon Utilities. “Our plan is to establish a system of spare pumps that could be quickly dropped into any of our stations if the need arises, though the Avant pumps haven’t let us down yet.”
So far, Avant MQC choppers have yet to clog or “rag up.” Kearney reports that previously installed pumps were problematic with numerous stoppage issues, resulting in frequent callouts and system downtime. Tsurumi’s chopper design eliminated this problem.
“The old pumps couldn’t handle the stuff that was coming in, so we had to manually remove it on several occasions,” explains Kearney. “We’d unclog pumps and think, ‘They should be easily chewing that up and sending it down the line’—but they rarely did. And we’d inevitably be called out at night or when it was raining to fix them, so we’re all thankful not to be doing that anymore. We’ve never been called out to resolve a clogging situation since installing the Avant pumps about eight months ago. That’s due to the efficiency of their chopping mechanism, which was probably the biggest factor in our purchasing decision.”
