Flocculator Rebuild, Repair, Parts or  Replacement or Spare Flocculator Mixers

What is your game plan to repair or replace a flocculator that is no longer in operation.  In 100 random visits to treatment facilities, you will find a non-operational or a potential ailing-floc-region in well over half of these visits.  Ideally, the best approach is to have a spare flocculator assembly available and ready for quick installation, so that your failed or ailing flocculator can be repaired in a reasonable cost effective time frame.  To often, this is not the case, resulting in either substandard water quality, caused by an unmixed region, or at best, a poor value judgment, due to an expensive pressed repair schedule.      

Waste Treatment and Water Treatment plants are in close proximity with all municipalities.  Many manufacturing sites have their own satellite waste treatment facilities, which can be as common as a simple neutralization application, prior to discharging to the sewer, or as complex as the pre-processing of a corrosive waste, such as sodium hydroxide, prior to pick up by a an expensive hazardous waste carrier.  In each case, there is one undeniable fact.  Mixers either wear out, or they break down over time which generally means, as the first step, determining the cost to rebuild or repair of your mixer.  

Some organizations have their own maintenance and repair facilities, or they might be using an off site repair contractor, where the preferred method may be to purchase the required parts and rebuild the mixer yourself.  Today most or all maintenance departments have been scaled back, and are stressed just handling day to day activities, so an on-sight repair may or may not be a feasible solution to solving your problems in a cost effective manner.

So the choice then comes down to the repair or rebuild or replace your existing ailing flocculator.  In other words, do we choose to supplement a flocculator, with some acquired age on it, with new parts or do we choose an outright replacement of the entire assembly.  To be direct, there are some "Rolls-Royce-Type-Models" still out there but unless you are familiar with the rarified PTE, or if your mixer was build prior to the 70's, your mixer is probably not in this category.  On the other hand, getting parts for these relics today is certainly getting to be price prohibitive.  So, the age old dilemma ensues, do we risk throwing good money after bad upon a repair or rebuild using upgraded parts with our existing flocculator.  If you do the repair yourself, you may be able to save some time and money purchasing your own commercially available bearings and seals, however you still have to confront a parts pricing scheme that result in a parts price that is 6-times that of purchasing new components.  

As such, it is always best to consider outright replacement or to consider a spare flocculator.   The answer to this question just might surprise you and your eventual choice might even fit nicely within your general maintenance budget ... but this will most certainly be directly dependent upon a time factor ... how quickly will you be made to act on the problem.  As always action always out guns reaction.   

 03.07.10