Wastewater treatment expert Jacopa expounds on the benefits of installing trash rakes
For water service companies, ensuring that wastewater treatment works are fully operational is a key aim and one that can be severely disrupted if vital assets are damaged by debris. Finding that a fine screen or pump has been wrecked by debris from storms or inconsiderately dumped, is one of the worst scenarios.
The main defence against such damage is upstream protection. This is a strong market, for obvious reasons; some fine screens can cost upwards of £100,000 each and pumps can cost double this amount. Even upstream inlet equipment designed to protect important assets, such as coarse bar screens, is not immune to damage and also needs to be protected against debris.
Trash rakes: What they do, and conventional limitations
The ideal way to protect all wastewater treatment works equipment is by installing trash rakes, which remove debris from the coarse bar screens before any damage occurs. But conventional trash rakes can require complex civil works and large amounts of space and have limited ability to remove oversized, awkward debris such as tree trunks and tyres, and can struggle to remove the fibrous matter that often gets twined round the screening bars.
The Bosker trash rake is an ideal solution to all these issues. And, in the UK and Ireland municipal water markets, Jacopa has the sole right to distribute this highly-regarded equipment, which performs the work of a trash rake, conveyor and debris loading system in one – with the effect of substantially reducing costs.
A trash rake with a difference?
Bosker solutions have low operation and maintenance costs, thanks to their sturdy design and thoughtful touches such as not having any submerged moving parts. The equipment comes with pre-programmed differential level
settings, and can be retrofitted into existing channels with a minimum of modification to the existing civil works.
Bosker has been designing, building and installing its beautifully engineered, ultra-reliable trash rakes since the 1960s and is the most experienced producer of this type of equipment globally with over 1100 installations to attest to their reliability and robustness.
Capable of removing debris like plastics, timber, bricks and, er… cars
The Bosker overhead system consists of fully-automated grab units with grippers that are tough enough to remove the sorts of large debris that are a nightmare for wastewater treatment works: plastics and glass bottles, timber, concrete and bricks, not to mention smaller versions of the famous “fatbergs” – balls of condensed fat and rag as well as metal objects and even (legends have it) cars and dead animals.
Bosker has also developed a low-profile ‘Bandit’ range to cater for smaller pumping stations and water inlets. The Bandit has both fixed and mobile options and is extremely compact, so it fits easily and unobtrusively into the smaller sites it’s intended for.
