Champaign moments for biogas operation

Standards are very high at the acclaimed Urbana & Champaign Sanitary District (UCSD). Very High!
Offering a one-year guarantee on your equipment? Think again.
When the team at this Illinois treatment facility looked to upgrade the pumps on three of its anaerobic digesters, a lifetime of around 20 years was expected.
Almost eight years in, and the pumps that were installed on the 500,000-gallon digesters, are, according to Justin Profancik, Director of Operations at UCSD, ‘very dependable, reliable and durable’.
Situated approximately 140 miles south of Chicago, UCSD’s digesters were built separately over a period of years at its Northeast Treatment Plant (NEP), which opened in 1924 (UCSD’s Southwest Treatment Plant opened in 1968). In 2016, it was time for an upgrade, especially as the existing pumps were clogging up more or less on a quarterly basis.
“The old units had done a pretty good job,” said Justin Profancik, “but weren’t Chopper Pumps (*invented by Landia in 1950), so the solids, rags and grit would gradually accumulate, causing them to clog. We then had to take them apart and clean them out, so there was a lot more...