Helical Screw Conveyors

Helical Screw Conveyors

Helical Screw Conveyor consists of a screw (a helical surface surrounding a central cylindrical shaft) inside a hollow pipe. The screw is turned usually by a windmill or by manual labour. As the shaft turns, the bottom end scoops up a volume of water. This water will slide up in the spiral tube, until it finally pours out from the top of the tube and feeds the irrigation systems. The screw was used mostly for draining water out of mines or other areas of low lying water.

The contact surface between the screw and the pipe does not need to be perfectly watertight, as long as the amount of water being scooped at each turn is large compared to the amount of water leaking out of each section of the screw per turn. Water leaking from one section leaks into the next lower one, so that a sort of mechanical equilibrium is achieved in use.