The Wood Screw Pump is a low-lift axial-flow drainage pump

Axial flow pump

An axial flow pump, or AFP, is a common type of pump that essentially consists of a propeller in a pipe. The propeller can be driven directly by a sealed motor in the pipe or mounted to the pipe from the outside or by a right-angle drive shaft that pierces the pipe.The main advantage of an AFP is...

 designed by A. Baldwin Wood

A. Baldwin Wood

Albert Baldwin Wood was an inventor and engineer from New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1899....

 in 1913 to cope with the drainage problems of New Orleans. Until the installation of Wood's extremely efficient pumps, the city had experienced chronic flooding problems, bringing diseases such as malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

 and yellow fever

Yellow fever

Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

 together with contamination of drinking water supplies. The Wood's pumps are driven by 2000 hp synchronous General Electric motors built in the early 1900s. The pump was designed to lift a large volume of water over levees some 10 m high into Lake Pontchartrain

Lake Pontchartrain

Lake Pontchartrain is a brackish estuary located in southeastern Louisiana. It is the second-largest inland saltwater body of water in the United States, after the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and the largest lake in Louisiana. As an estuary, Pontchartrain is not a true lake.It covers an area of with...

.

Having proved their operational efficiency in New Orleans, Wood's pumps were installed in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 and the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. Until the arrival of hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

, the pumps had kept New Orleans from becoming waterlogged for close on 100 years.

External links

• 1974 article on the Wood Screw Pump by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
  American Society of Mechanical Engineers
  The American Society of Mechanical Engineers is a professional body, specifically an engineering society, focused on mechanical engineering....
  
  
• The A.B. Wood Low Head High Volume Screw Pump
• United States Army Corps of Engineers Report
• The Wood Screw Pump: A Study of the Drainage Development of New Orleans