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Chemical Metering Pumps Well Suited for Agricultural Applications Like Nitrogen Injection into Center Pivot Irrigation Systems by Madden Pump
08/02/2019… Sometimes less is more. Read about how the Madden chemical injection pump design is one of the most reliable and dependable brands in the market. Farmers love our pumps

Madden Pump’s chemical metering pumps have been around since the 1950’s and the design continues to withstand the test of time. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. We have found Farmers seem to appreciate this phrase in particular, as we continue to service their 60+ year old metering pumps with replacement valve parts to this day.

Chemical metering is the act of adding chemicals into another process at a repeatable and consistent rate. The consistent and repeatable aspect is what distinguishes this process from any other type of fluid transfer process; there are hundreds of applications requiring the transfer of liquid from point A to B, none require the consistency and accuracy at the level chemical metering does.

For several years now Madden Pump has added the phrase Proven, Rugged Quality to our literature, website, and other information mediums. For 65 years now, Madden products have been described this way by employees, distributors, rep’s, and end users alike. It has always been the Madden mantra to manufacture industrial chemical metering pumps and boiler blowdown equipment with quality and simplicity in mind.

Madden Pump is located in Elkhart, Indiana and has manufactured their rugged, dependable line of chemical metering pumps for over 65 years now. We have a variety of wetted end materials that allow our pumps to be chemically compatible with any liquid you need to dose. All parts are stocked and can ship out same day when spares are needed and it also allows us to build emergency, rush pumps in as little as 2 days. Madden Pump may not have a vast variety of chemical metering pumps designs like some of our large competitors, but when it comes to lead times and responsive service Madden is second to none.

Madden is going to start posting articles on common chemicals being pumped via the JN, MF, and MH Madden Pumps. The intention of this blog is to walk the reader through our process as to better understand how and why we come up with our recommendations.

In addition to specifying the required flow rate and pressure to be pumped, the drive motor needs to be considered when a specifying a metering pump. We have prepared the following list to help you make the motor choice that will satisfy the needs of your application.

When you have an application that requires you to meter liquids into other processes at a finite and accurate rate, a metering pump is well suited for this. Even more specifically, when you need that finite amount of liquid to be dosed at a consistent, repeatable rate, diaphragm metering pumps are perfect. For mechanically actuated diaphragm metering pumps, this usually means the operating pressure is less than 500 PSI, for hydraulically actuated diaphragm metering pumps the pressures can go much higher, often up to 1,000-2,000 PSI.

To start off 2018, we had an interesting repair pump situation arise. A Madden metering pump sent back in for repair that was over 54 years old. This diaphragm metering pump has been in operation since October 16, 1964. The majority of its time has been spent dosing diatomaceous earth slurry for the drinking water at Wells College in Aurora, NY. It just 
recently got sent in for repair to semi retire as the backup pump.

There are many chemical metering related equipment available to consider in regards to your chemical injection application. Most of them being installed in line to assist the chemical metering pump.

Polymers and alums (or aluminum sulfates) are often used in wastewater treatment processes. These solutions act as flocculants and coagulants to help separate impurities from waste water.

Flocculating, or coagulating, are similar processes that treat wastewater by helping bring together dissolved and suspended solids and other impurities in water to form larger aggregates for easy separation. After the aggregates form, they will settle to the bottom for easy removal by either scraping the formed “scum” away or utilizing an inline filter.

Madden Pump has noticed an increase in inquiries from end users looking to automate chemical liquid transferring applications, to a simple, but automated system.

The premise of many of these applications involves an employee having to keep a bucket under a dispenser to then either transport the chemical from that station to the next process or simply package it for shipping.

By nature, most chemical metering pumps, are positive displacement type diaphragm pumps. This is because repeatable and accurate output is crucial to chemical injection applications as wasted, excess chemical injection can ruin the process as well as cost you a lot of money. Positive displacement type diaphragm pumps have very repeatable and accurate outputs.

When Madden personnel look into design changes and improvements with our metering pumps, our priority is always first focused on characteristics and features that promote 24/7/365 chemical metering. Our goal is to provide the most rugged, easy to operate chemical metering pump on the market. Set it, forget it, and then trust it: the Madden metering 

pump will be a workhorse for your chemical injection application with little to no down time in comparison to most of our competitors.

!!(Author’s Note: Other than a motor malfunction, or an application flaw that causes the pump to begin to dead head, your Madden metering pump will not overheat; due to operating in an oil bath, and the bench testing every chemical injection pump at our facility for smooth, leak free operation, Madden’s robust design is made to never need repairs of any internal parts on our metering pumps. Only occasional wetted end repairs are ever required.

Air is not the friend of a chemical metering pump. Air is hard to compress, and as a result, very hard to move. Diaphragm type metering pumps do not move air well, if at all, unlike water which is much denser than air. So if your chemical injection system has air in the suction or discharge piping, do not be surprised when your application experiences

Madden Pump makes high quality, industrial chemical injection pumps. Each pump is made to order and then put on a bench test. For every single order.

Positive displacement chemical metering pump designs are the best available for injecting chemicals into processes where such dosing is needed. There are many additional components that can enhance the performance of your chemical dosing application. This article will walk through the more popular components found in chemical metering applications and mention the purpose each of them serve.

The term positive displacement is used to describe an action that causes a fixed amount of something to be moved, displaced. The key word in the previous sentence is fixed. When dosing chemicals into your application, accuracy and repeatability in output are the most important factors. So having a pump that can produce a fixed output is crucial.

In the case of a chemical metering pump, being offline could mean allowing untreated liquids to continue along in your process, ruining an entire batch.

Dosing pumps malfunctioning or needing repairs is always a nuisance, but depending on the application, it can be more than a nuisance, it can be a critical hit to your business with every minute it is offline.

When it comes to chemical dosing applications, whether it be metering sulfuric acid, caustic soda, alums, chlorides, or etc. etc., often times a diaphragm metering pump is the most appropriate pump type to get the job done.

The reasons for clean and neutral water are vast, stemming from human health to piping and equipment durability. Chemicals like Sulfuric Acid, Phosphoric Acid, Nitric Acid, among others are all used to help maintain PH levels in water. This article will go over why PH balance in water treatment is important and the needed safety measures in your pump design for handling the chemicals that are commonly used to treat water.

Pumping chemicals can be a costly application. Whether the application is treating water, treating waste water, de-foaming a process, or producing something with the chemical, needing to reorder gallons and gallons of chemicals certainly adds up by the end of the year.

When faced with a new chemical injection application for an industrial, municipal, or commercial process, often times the planning around procuring and installing all the components you need becomes a cumbersome and time consuming event. There are so many accessories you can add to a chemical metering pump to help with performance, and plenty of brands and suppliers for each part as well.

You would think with a positive displacement pump the manufacturer would want to make the driving force of the liquid as strong as possible, right? And for a diaphragm type chemical metering pump, this would be the diaphragm. According to our distributors across the country, our competitors’ diaphragms are very thin in comparison to Madden Pump’s robust design.

When considering different positive displacement pumps for your chemical addition process, often times you will be choosing between a diaphragm type metering pump and a plunger type metering pump. Both pumps are designed to produce accurate and repeatable outputs.

Do you currently have a pumping process that requires workers to monitor and/or wait on the process to start and finish? Madden Pump’s new automated batching system could be just the thing for you.

Paying someone to stand around and wait for a certain amount of chemical, oil, or any other liquid to be dosed into a system is costly and inefficient. Employees can be spending their time elsewhere helping the business make profits. Turning your manual pumping system into an automatic pumping, or batching, system may be easier and less costly than you think.

When purchasing a chemical metering pump most are concerned with the features of the pump, like, the flow rate, pressure rating, available materials, life expectancy, and so on. Not so many people consciously stop to think about all of the little, unobvious things that can cause a chemical injection pump to underperform. And you probably shouldn’t, but that’s why Madden Pump has put together this article.

With the continuing progression of the internet and online sales, it can be easy to forget about looking into local distribution for your chemical metering pump needs. There are certainly times where the convenience of buying direct from the manufacturer is appealing, repeat purchases would be an example, but as we are constantly reminded as a manufacturer trying to sell nationwide and occasionally to the global market, nothing beats face to face sales.

Madden Pump is capable of getting a “standard” (i.e. pump not needing a special motor) pump and/or repair parts to you within a day or two when necessary.

There are many pumps available on the market for injecting chemicals into a process. So what makes one better than the other? This can be hard to break down, especially when you’re not only comparing brands to one another but also comparing different pump types. Gear pumps, piston pumps, peristaltic pumps, and diaphragm type pumps are all available pumps to consider when injecting chemicals.

The standard reasons for having practices that allow us to claim our products as Made in the USA do apply to our decision to go this route. We are proud of the country we live in, and we want to support other 100% USA based companies like ourselves. When a customer purchases a chemical metering pump, sample cooler, or boiler blowdown equipment from us, they are helping support Paula, Aaron, Lori, Michelle, Johnny, Ed, Stu, Gary and others at Madden, all living in Elkhart Indiana. Purchases support Madden and our families.

This blog will go over the simplest ways to change the flow rate on a Madden metering pump. To start, all Madden chemical metering pumps are designed with a manual stroke length adjustment built right into the pump. This allows for a very linear turndown of the pump’s output or flowrate and it is quite simple. A knob and dial scale on top of the pump allow you to turn down the ouput at a 10:1 ratio of your pump model’s max capacity.

When an application calls for the pumping of thick, viscous liquids, Madden has a valve assembly designed to handle these slurries and polymers which can have viscosities as high as 450 cPs. The design can pump these liquids without losing output or accuracy.

Applications that call for metering, dosing, or the injecting of chemicals also call for accuracy no matter the conditions or settings the pump may face. The need for accuracy in these applications is simply a given, and there are two reasons accuracy goes hand in hand with injecting chemicals. The first reason is that precise amounts of a chemical could be needed to achieve the goal of the application.

Injecting, metering, and dosing are all terms for adding repeatable and consistent amounts of liquid to another entity. What this section of the blog is addressing is proportioning, which is the term we use to differential the process from chemical injection, chemical metering, and chemical dosing.

This blog is intended to explain our stance for claiming to be one of, if not the most, cost effective chemical metering pump on the market. Merriam-Webster has two definitions of “cost-effective” they are as follows:

Simple Definition: Producing good results without costing a lot of money.
Full Definition: Economical in terms of tangible benefits produced by money spent.So let’s look at how Madden metering pumps can be the best bang for your buck.

This blog and video will show how easily it is to replace wearable parts on our heavy duty chemical metering pumps. Madden Pump designs industrial grade chemical metering pumps intended for 24/7/365 use. All three series of our metering pumps are made to be an investment. They are not intended to be throwaway pumps, we want our chemical metering pumps to dose chemicals in your application for a very long time.

High quality metering pumps are precise when they arrive from the factory. Pressures, temperatures, viscosities, and other factors will not affect the ability of a quality metering pump to be precise. In other words, these factors will not affect the pump’s ability to produce the same output repeatedly for a long time. A quality metering pump’s output should not fluctuate while in operation.

This article and video will walk you through the step by step process of replacing the flexible shaft in a Madden MF series diaphragm metering pump. The process is the exact same for the MH series pumps.

Replacing a flexible shaft is a quick and simple process, as are all repairs on a Madden pump. Madden Pump’s diaphragm metering pumps are not “throw away” pumps.

This blog is intended to explain the difference between mechanically actuated diaphragm metering pumps and hydraulically actuated metering pumps; after the ground work has been laid, we will discuss the advantages of Madden type DDB double diaphragm construction and actuation, in comparison to a hydraulic metering pump’s construction and actuation.

At Madden Pump our MF series diaphragm metering pumps are our most popular series of industrial grade metering pumps. If you have an application calling for the pumping of a liquid, potentially dangerous or corrosive, from 5-75 GPH, then keep reading to find out more about what these heavy duty metering pumps can do for you.

Sodium hydroxide, often called caustic soda or lye, is a common chemical handled by Madden metering pumps. With corrosive substances like sodium hydroxide, it is important to find a chemical metering pump with materials available that can come into contact with this chemical, and last for a considerable amount of time. Any leaks or damage that occur in a pump which is processing a chemical like this could have disastrous consequences to the things surrounding it.

Among the many variations and customizable features allowable in a Madden diaphragm metering pump, is the ability to duplex (double), triplex (triple), and multiplex (quadruple) the pumping heads.

A quick explanation:

When you hear words like this in the pumping world, essentially what we’re talking about is providing a mini pumping system, via the pump itself. In other words, there is 1 motor, 1 worm gear reducer, and 1 drive shaft, driving 2-4 pumping heads.

This blog will allow you to visually see how a Madden JN series diaphragm metering pump works. We have placed an emphasis on explaining how the 10:1 manual stroke adjustment works.