Vacuum sewage systems use negative pressure to transport waste to a processing plant. They offer cost-effective and environmentally friendly benefits, using less water and electricity. Pumps maintain the negative pressure, and valves must be properly maintained to avoid disturbing the pressure balance.
A vacuum sewage system relies on negative pressure to transport waste to a processing plant. The first versions of this system were developed in the late 1800s in Europe, but remained primarily in use aboard transport vehicles such as aircraft for over a century. Communities began exploring vacuum sewer systems in the early 2000s to see if they could offer environmental and other benefits over conventional gravity sewers. There are some benefits to using this approach, including greater cost-effectiveness and environmental friendliness.
Within a vacuum sewage system, waste from a single facility is transferred to a collection chamber. When it reaches a critical point, a valve opens, typically operated by a float that can activate when the liquid rises above a certain height inside the tank. The contents of the tank are drawn into the pipelines through a negative pressure, which is maintained by pumps in a remote vacuum station. This pulls the raw wastewater to holding tanks so it can be routed to a processing facility.
Pumps are a key component of the vacuum sewage system. They maintain the negative pressure needed to keep the system running and are carefully maintained to prevent backflow and other problems. System sizing depends on the area to be covered and must allow room for growth to avoid the need for retrofitting shortly after installation. It can be used to provide sewage services to a region of a city or to an entire city and outlying areas, depending on how much public officials want to invest in public works.
Environmentally, a vacuum sewer may be better than a gravity fed sewer system. Less water is required per rinse, which reduces water consumption and limits contamination of usable water with wastewater. In addition, the system uses very little electricity, as the only place where power is needed is at the central pumping plant. There are also economic benefits; piping can be smaller due to the way the system works. It can also be much less expensive to install a vacuum sewage system.
Although this type of sewage system is known as a “vacuum sewage” this is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not actually based on a pure vacuum, but on air pressure differentials. The pumps create a negative pressure which draws the sewage into the plumbing system. Individual facilities connected to the vacuum sewage system need to be sure that their valves are properly maintained, as if one gets stuck open, it can disturb the pressure balance across the system.
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