Waukesha Universal Pump Flat Body Profile- What is it and when should you use it?

Continuing with our Waukesha Universal PD pump focus, in today’s post we want to talk about one of the most common options for the Waukesha Universal 2 and Universal 3 pumps– the flat body profile. We’ll take a look at a flat body profile is and why you should consider it for your next CIP PD pump application.

Let’s start by taking a look at a regular ole’ Waukesha Universal Pump body. If you look at the body, you’ll see that the rotor cavities have a slight hourglass shape to them with the port area bowing in slightly. Because this doesn’t impact rotor rotation and saves machine time , on a standard Waukesha Universal Pump body, we’ll leave that hourglass shape in. This creates a problem though if we’re going to CIP the pump and need to fully drain.

When we CIP a pump, we want to accomplish a few things as it relates to the PD pump. The two biggest things we want to allow is for full draining and to provide the CIP solution with full access to the entire cover o-ring groove. To fully drain the pump, we’ll need to orient it with the pump’s ports in the vertical (i.e. horizontal or side mount). With the Universal Pumps standard hourglass shape, however, we don’t have a low point for the CIP fluid to drain and we also create an area in that cover o-ring where we aren’t getting cleaning fluid.

To address this issue, we take the pump body and machine that hourglass profile flat, hence the name “flat body profile”. With the pump ports in the vertical, this makes the port at 6 o’clock our low point for drain. We’re also able to achieve CIP solution flow to all parts of the pump cover o-ring groove.

While there are other considerations when specifying a Waukesha PD pump for a CIP application, including CIP rotors, pump differential pressure, and how to operate your pump during cleaning, for now just remember that if  you want to fully drain your Waukesha Universal Series 2 or 3 Universal pump, you need to put the ports in the vertical and select a flat body profile so it fully drains. And as always, if you have any questions about available features or how to specify a sanitary pump for your application, contact a Triplex Sales Engineer today!