A North Carolina clean-water plant was having difficulty with a rectangular primary clarifier.
The scraper flight boards and scum collector boards had gone out of sync causing the chain to jump the sprocket and fall off the guides.
An investigation found that the drive system needed a properly lubricated rolling element to minimize drag on the drive and chains so that they would not jump off the track or sprocket.
The plant in Durham, North Carolina (12 mgd average flow) found a solution in a graphite-metal alloy bearing for the fiberglass-reinforced plastic chain drive.
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In March 2020 Michael Richmond, reliability engineer with the
