Like many other facilities across the country, the Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility in Salt Lake City, UT, is continuously challenged to meet the expanding water treatment demands of a growing residential and industrial community. With this growth has come a vexing problem for the plant.

"We were experiencing more and more large objects coming into the headworks of our plant," said Dan James, maintenance manager for this thoroughly modern 65 MGD wastewater treatment plant, which uses the Trickling Filter/Solids Contact Process. "There were huge grease balls, sticks, rocks, wood two-by-fours and every kind of garbage. We were constantly dealing with plugging of our conveying system that handles the screenings and major problems with our downstream equipment."

That's when the plant called in Franklin Miller for a solution, purchasing a heavy-duty Taskmaster TM1630 screenings grinder. The unit was strategically placed between the discharge of the screens and the inlet hopper of the vacuum screenings conveying system. The Taskmaster employs a twin shaft shredding mechanism with two banks of intermeshing cutters that easily grind even large screenings solids down to a size readily handled by the system. At Central Valley, the shredded output is discharged from the Taskmaster, transported to another level, and hauled off to a landfill for disposal.

The unit has operated perfectly to stop the plugging in the screenings conveyance piping and has been instrumental in protecting downstream equipment, according to James.

The Taskmaster TM1630 is a heavily constructed 10 hp grinder suitable for handling heavy solids accumulations. This unit employs 2¾ in. hardened hex shafting, mechanical seals, direct inline gear drive, and special cleaning combs that assure the cutting chamber is kept clear. A Model S260 Automatic Reversing Control reverses the unit in case of a jam condition.

Powerful and versatile, Taskmaster Series TM1600 workhorses can shred heavy solids in both gravity and liquid systems. The units can be installed horizontally with a stand, hopper, or flange adapter, or vertically for channel or pipeline applications. Typical applications include gravity and conveyor fed sewage screenings, in-channel raw sewage, correctional institution effluent, documents, product rejects and returns, garments, filters, bottles and containers, plastics, turnings, packaging, wood, paper, and more.

Units can be supplied with high profile cutters for grabbing solids that roll on others, or with ultrafine cutters that finely reduce wastewater solids to a size easily handled by downstream equipment. They are available in stainless steel construction in addition to standard alloy steel and iron body construction. Available input sizes range from 16 x 20 in. to 16 x 60 in.

Recently, James received a call from another wastewater facility with an almost identical problem. He recommended the Taskmaster. "I told them that it does everything we need," he concluded.