Casino is a big winner with new N-Pump

The gambling Casino in the City of Hull, Québec, overlooking the beautiful Ottawa River, welcomes over 4,000 visitors per week. People are attracted to this new Casino for entertainment and some to find fortune. Unfortunately, things were not so rosy at the Casino’s pumping station. City Engineers and operators were starting to worry about the capabilities of the station that they had just recently built.

The problem

Soon after its completion, the pump station started to experience serious clogging problems. Both of the station’s two pumps had to be taken out of the wet well, dismantled and thoroughly cleaned, before putting them back into operation.

“During 1997 the pumps had to be cleaned fifteen times, costing time and extra operating expenses”, says Jacques Desbiens, operator for the City.

Under normal circumstances, using regular submersible pumps would have been fine, but it was later discovered that a nearby industrial park was dumping its effluents directly into the City’’s sewer system, which then found its way to the Casino’s pumping station. Plastic bags and twine were regularly found wrapped around the pumps’ impellers. This was a major challenge for any pump.

The solution

Confident that the new N-Pump would solve the clogging problem, ITT Flygt offered the City of Hull one pump for a trial period. One of the existing pumps was left in operation to enable the comparison of both pumps’ efficiency. Each pump handles 70 l/s and alternates at the end of each cycle. Both pumps have the same power rating.

The N-Pump was installed in December 1997 and is still in operation, with no problems. Here are just a few of the positive results: A dramatic decrease in emergency maintenance; The station had to be cleaned twice since the N-Pump was installed, as opposed to fifteen times in the same time period before its installation; The station showed a 23% increase in overall efficiency.

Environmental Science & Engineering – January 2003