Landia Chopper Pump Disarms Knives At AD Plant

Even some of the company’s most experienced service engineers were recently surprised to see what its pumps and pasteurisers had had to cope with at a food-waste-to-energy plant in Essex.

The unintentional addition of numerous knives in catering waste had given the Landia Chopper Pump a little more to chew on than anticipated. Yet despite the considerable challenge, the pump was completely undamaged, restarting immediately after service, which would be well beyond less resilient pumps.

Landia’s Technical Sales Engineer, Howard Burton, said: “The robust performance of our Chopper Pump is no surprise, but all the time it had been minimising food waste particle size to help provide good quality AD feedstock, it was astonishing to see how it had effectively worked as a screen, capturing such a large quantity of knives”.

He added; “Back in 1950 when Landia’s Christian Oelgaard invented the Chopper Pump, he created a truly resilient piece of engineering, but I doubt he thought it would be working so effectively on a pasteuriser with knife-infested food waste!”

Designed as a free-standing unit that heat-treats organic waste so that the resulting thin substance can be used as an energy-efficient substrate, each Landia pasteuriser is fitted with a Landia Chopper Pump.

Organic waste is received, liquefied, then heated to 70oC. Held at this temperature for one hour in accordance with animal by-products regulations, the pasteurised material is pumped to the next stage in closed pipes by one highly efficient process.