I'm not scared to try something that is off the beaten track or even completely new, but it has to have some kind of gain, obvious to others or not. To me this turning into a situation where too much compromise is required to make it work and no real gain, so as Breezy suggested I will look at optimising the collection points on the table and combine the pump with the separator.

I will redo the separator to include bigger in/out fittings, and will also try do something more like the design in the pictures, since the footprint of the separator is already covering floor space, no harm in using the space above the plastic bin.