|
By switching to an onsite water treatment plan, businesses large and small are able to cut costs and comply with state and federal regulations.
By Henry Vere
When a business buys equipment it’s inevitable that sooner or later the equipment will have some kind of trouble. That’s a fact of life for any business. But the one thing you don’t want to have trouble with is your water treatment system. “All of a sudden you’re in the newspapers and grappling with a reputation under question,” says Tom Gerbracht, owner of Clearwater Technology, in Berlin Heights, OH.
Much of Gerbracht’s work is for the metalworking and printing industries, especially smaller businesses. “Every single place has a different issue when it comes to wastewater treatment,” says Gerbracht. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the same exact set of problems twice on any systems I’ve worked with over the years.
“Many of the recycling machine fluids which are used in equipment are fairly similar, and I can tell just by walking in the lobby of a company; if it stinks of that fluid I can tell they have problems and already know what’s going on.
“The first and also most important step is convincing the operator to give me a sample,” says Gerbracht. “Then I am able to send the sample to the best and most appropriate wastewater engineer, such as the Monman Group. I’ll ask them to tell me what’s there. I then receive a report back, consult with my principals on the proper system, and finally propose the system to the client.
“Though it may look complex at first, often it comes down to putting various components, such as a pretreatment holding tank and perhaps a polishing system, together as a package. Finally I train the client on how it works and then they’re up and running.”
A silk screen printer of athletic team shirts had a problem with silver, a heavy metal, entering the sewer. This small company has an average of 15 employees. A template is used, such as that on the front of a microwave oven. This template uses silver because it conducts electricity to print it on the cloth instead of using hardwires. The silver is impaled and eventually rubs off. The operations had reached 600 parts per million (ppm) of silver production, but they needed to drop to 10 ppm.
“I was able to do this, as silver is fairly easy to dislodge from a water molecule,” says Gerbracht. “When the Wastewater Engineers Inc. system we chose is finally up and running the cost to this client will be $20,000 and they guarantee this will meet sewer discharge regulations.”
Regulation Changes May Be a Driver—and Covering All Bases
Sewer discharge regulations have changed over the years, from such levels as a few hundred parts per million on zinc to a couple hundred parts per billion. “We’ll get a memo that says: Effective immediately, reduce oil and grease levels by 80% or you will be fined,” says Gerbracht. Another one of Clearwater’s projects involved a company manufacturing radio frequency testing equipment. The company’s machine shop abruptly had readings that were out of the acceptable range. By collecting and sampling water from the men’s room in the machine shop, it was discovered that metals were discharging from the sinks during routine hand-washing. This water drained directly into the sewer system. The soldering in the shop contained increased amounts of zinc and copper. Towels used to shine up the solders on the panels were also being rinsed in the restroom. This presented another source of metal into the sewer system.
The simple solution in this case involved purchasing hand creams, rubber gloves, and towels as a way to prevent this from being the source of metals in discharge water. “Little things often are what throw people off with such activities as cleaning up, especially after a whole wastewater system’s been installed, but things are still found to be off,” says Gerbracht.
At another facility the condensate from compressors was draining down into the sewers in the summer months. This equipment was installed in a concrete box in the front of the plant. The landscaper, getting tired of cutting the weeds around the box, treated them with Roundup around it instead. An inspector from the EPA then discovered dead grass around the sewer box.
“This $50,000 system was opened up and inspected for problems when it was simply the landscaper spraying around the box and killing the grass,” says Gerbracht. “The company had no idea the compressors were creating this much water either.”
Aviation Painting Operation Needing Few Consumables
Many of the clients Gerbracht deals with formerly paid to haul their wastewater away. But that option may become quite expensive. One Clearwater client strips and then repaints airplanes onsite in its hangars. Chemicals applied directly to the exterior as a stripping agent for the paint cause it to bubble up. The entire jet is then scraped off with a putty knife. After the scrapings are swept off the floor the plane is rinsed off with pressure cleaners and hoses prior to repainting the plane. This final rinse must be done with fresh tap water.
Two thousand gallons of water are created daily, containing cadmium, chrome, copper, lead, nickel, silver, zinc, arsenic, mercury, cyanide, oil, and grease. The water went into a holding tank, which would then be drained and hauled off, at an expense of $1,200 per day.
For $105,000 Gerbracht installed a brand-new 150-square-foot membrane system, which made it possible for the company to treat all its wastewater onsite. In addition to this, approximately $25,000 worth of computer equipment will also be added to the system. This state-of-the-art system has a color-coded touch screen and Ethernet connection in case there is a problem with pressures or flows in the system. If problems arise, an e-mail or a fax can be sent to alert Clearwater of any problems. The system has the ability to detect levels of liquids in the various tanks involved for $1,500 worth of computer software.
“After everything is recycled through the membrane system a certain percentage then goes down through the sewer,” says Gerbracht. “A final step in our system involving a carbon resin makes the water like tap water once again. We are currently in developmental stages, but with this resin we think they shouldn’t even have to put their final water down the sewer as it will be tap-water quality.
“The membrane removes solids at 0.05 microns [a human hair is 80 microns]. It’s actually more a separation than a filtration process. The liquid goes through the membrane and then into the process tank. The undesirable parts stay behind and the clean water drains off. Every few months or once a year, the tank on the system will be run without feeding any water to it to concentrate it to 100 or 200 gallons and then that will be hauled off.”
Since this liquid is not toxic, it will simply be taken to a landfill, be deep well injected, or get treated. “Many times with the various regulations and placing this water down the drain, the reuse of the water can make fear about not meeting those standards a moot point.”
Water Recycling
Clearwater has another client that operates a stamping facility. This client produces tank heads for the ends of compressors, and its main operations consist of bending metal. Heavy oil is sprayed on the metal before it’s stamped. Then the stampings get washed in. That liquid is eventually drained down the sewer.
“I was ultimately called in to install a wastewater treatment system,” says Gerbracht. “But what I convinced them to do was to recycle the water. They were paying $0.30 per gallon to haul the water away, but when the soapy water they were using was factored in for $0.40 per gallon, therefore final—and actual cost—was $0.70 per gallon. In the end they ended up simply recycling the soapy water—and saving money on hauling off the end water.”
Gerbracht calls his strategy “waste minimizing.” By simply cleaning up some of the water used, the sewer dumping is avoided, as is hauling, and money is saved on the raw material being discarded.
Metals Discharging and Environmental Issues
The water discharge regulation issues are driven more by what remains in the solids or sludges from municipal wastewater treatment plants, according to Gerbracht. For a watershed such as the Great Lakes Watershed where he lives, relatively clean sludge remaining after treatment at municipal waste plants is taken by farmers and spread on their fields for crops. The problem is, metals such as chrome do remain in that sludge to some degree and it runs back off the fields and then into groundwater and eventually the Great Lakes.
“Therefore the EPA now goes further upstream to the people actually creating the unclean water and telling them to reduce what’s in that effluent before it’s placed into the sewer,” says Gerbracht. “That’s where we come in, for the smaller manufacturers and shops under regulation pressures.
“As time goes by, I’m hearing from more and more people who called me years ago when hauling costs didn’t justify installation of an onsite treatment system. Now these folks are ready to talk, as hauling costs continue to rise. Another change has been floor scrub water; if someone had told me 20 years ago how much of this we’d be dealing with today, I would have laughed at them.”
The manufactured homes industry is another surprise that has cropped up. Gerbracht would never have guessed this rise either. Modular homes are built in a factory, especially in states like Indiana. In some factories homes are not built in days but in hours. At one particular Indiana factory, he says, 15 homes are produced per day.
The major effluent from such operations comes from the use of latex paint and drywall tools and equipment. All the equipment and brushes using these compounds must be cleaned. But such cleaning operations are the equivalent of washing cement down the sewer according to Gerbracht. He suggests there are some 50 systems around the country in the manufactured homes industry running operations that cause such discharges.
“For municipal water treatment facilities, it’s the oil and the solids giving them the most grief; such operations are simply not designed for that waste. Certain industrial wastes are fine—just not the solids in these new greater volumes.”
For Clearwater Technology, in the end it comes to selling the right product for the right site. Gerbracht discusses the options and, despite a loss in profit for him, pushes to have the perfect arrangement for his clients’ operations.
“I don’t keep any secrets from anyone. I try to tell them both what is good about the system and what will probably irritate them about it. Often if the literature states ‘10 minutes of attendant time’ their operator will still end up spending 30 to 45 minutes at the site waiting for various steps to happen and watching for the water to get clean. I lay it all out on the table. It’s always easier to exceed people’s expectations,” says Gerbracht.
Metals Discharging in Diverse Businesses
Douglas Gillen, director of environmental products at Siemens, notes a great deal of new metal removal due to discharge requirement changes over the years. (In 2004, US Filter was acquired by Siemens, creating a new division called Siemens Water Technologies.)
From traditional metal plating, business has branched out into the semi-conductor industry, PC boards, and medical devices to name a few, according to Gillen. Technology such as solar panels and photovoltaic systems contain cadmium in their treatment water systems as well.
 |
Photo: Clear Water Technology |
| Membrane systems remove 0.05-micron particles from water. |
“We have more of a centralized treatment philosophy, though, than many onsite wastewater treatment operations, which we feel is greener,” says Gillen. “What we do is have clients call us up, whether they are semi-conductor manufacturers or a chrome wheel-maker, with wastewater exceeding the limits for metals and we will recommend onsite tank storage.”
It will be a simple flow-through system with auxiliary equipment for oil or grease removal. These will stay in place, removing the targeted compound until the system is exhausted and loaded with the contaminant. Then, that material is taken to a facility in Roseville, MN, where a Resource Conservation Recovery Act facility, regulated by the EPA, recovers the metals from the resins. This way both the liability is assumed for the metals by Siemens and recycling credits can be received by the client because the metals are not going into a landfill.
From Siemens’s 80 service branches throughout the US, technicians handle the local workloads. Fresh, ready-to-go tanks are sent from the branches where the exchange is made for the spent tanks filled with wastes from heavy metal removal systems. Carbon exchanges can also be done at this time if organics exist in the water as well as a variety of other things.
 |
Photo: Photo: Siemens |
| Tanks allow an outside source to do water treatment offsite. |
“When a spent tank with something like chrome in it comes to a branch, it will be held there as some branches have 10-day holding permits from the EPA,” says Gillen. “Our drivers are all trained for handling of hazardous materials. They also provide the client a manifest of how the waste is being handled. When we have enough tanks accumulated we’ll place them on a tractor trailer and transport them to our 100,000-square-foot Roseville facility.”
In order to recover the metals it takes an extreme process, according to Gillen. There is much equipment involved. The facility also has the capability to handle liquid waste.
“Our system is especially beneficial to people who don’t have such operations as their primary business,” says Gillen. “From their end of things they don’t have to worry about maintenance; these are just tanks which some other guy comes and picks up, akin to vending machine service. What we offer them is to clean up their water, often to the point where they can recycle it themselves.”
Each system is tailored to each client’s needs despite looking the same on the outside. The shell on the tank may look the same on the outside, but it’s the resins inside that change in how things are set up. Among the many operations generating metals, one growing area includes ink manufacturing for packaging; these contain a fairly high concentration of heavy metals. Even cooling towers, with their copper and zinc components, now have to deal with discharge requirements. “Restrictions continue to grow tighter and tighter for many operations out there,” adds Gillen.
Mobility Is Key in Some Settings
Mobile Process Technology (MPT), of Memphis, TN, has been in business since 1969. A major auto manufacturing facility in Oklahoma City had a 4.5-million-gallon cooling system within which was contained a corrosion inhibitor, sodium molybdite for protection of the system’s piping. As the plant aged, and more leaks occurred, the city demanded it get rid of the 4.5 million gallons of molybdenite. It was going to cost the plant tens of millions of dollars to haul off this material by railcar (involving the construction of a whole new rail spur) 20,000 gallons at a time, according to Scott Carpenter, technical service/sales manager with MPT.
 |
Photo: Remco |
| Ever-changing regulations require systems to be up-to-date. |
“They found out about us and we came in on trailers with an anine resin, which we ran at 300 gallons per minute, recirculating the system and using a number of trailers, as each became exhausted,” says Carpenter. “We got things well within spec after a period of three weeks. We didn’t affect their operations because we took a side stream and kept running. They subsequently went to a less hazardous corrosion inhibitor.”
MPT regenerated the molybdite off the resin, precipitated it out into a solid form (molybdenum), and shipped it to a recycling facility. The company is also able to treat groundwater contamination and other liquids besides water, including glycol and alcohol solutions. It also handles radium and arsenic removal from drinking water. Metals removal forms approximately 20% of its business.
“When construction of new power plants came to a halt in the 1970s we converted our mobile trailers for more diverse applications,” says Carpenter. “Wherever there’s been a need with various wastewater applications we’ve tried to fill it.”
Building Systems Onsite—and Shipping Them Out
Bob Mesick, owner/operator of Remco Engineering, a small 20-year-old company, finds his company never knows where it’s heading with its systems; the needs change for clients all the time. “We’re often getting calls from people with new issues who didn’t have issues before,” says Mesick. “We do some work on small jobs and also work on groundwater for such things as chromium, uranium, zinc, lead, copper, and many other substances. At present there is much interest in recovering nickel during nickel-plating or mining operations.”
Remco’s systems are built onsite at its Ventura, CA, plant before they are skid-mounted prior to shipment out to the customer’s site. “It’s great to do the work onsite and ship it out. This always keeps things simple for us,” says Mesick. The larger of Remco’s systems treat up to approximately 100 gallons per minute. In addition to doing ion exchange work, Remco also works in reverse osmosis water purification applications, including both front-end water and wastewater.
“By being so diverse we remain busy at all times and now have shipped to locations around the world, including China, Vietnam, and Colombia,” says Mesick. “We find with metal removal most things are pretty straightforward; we work hard at keeping the costs down so our customers are not paying exorbitant amounts.
“What may drive costs up for Remco is the presence of iron, especially in mining wastes. Iron fouls up equipment; iron must be sludged out with a lot of lime sometimes. Iron doesn’t lend itself very well to what we do. What we do best is working with elements in very small amounts of regenerate making it easy to recycle—and at low costs.”
Metal or heavy metal removals present perhaps fewer challenges and procedures than many other substances in the industrial wastestream, but as the operators of these various companies point out, the real challenge may be for their customers as they find themselves tackling an ever-changing stream of regulations for wastewater discharges. But as these examples illustrate, there are companies out there to assist amid these hurdles, with an eye on keeping costs as low as possible at the same time.
Henry Vere writes extensively on engineering and scientific subjects.
OW - May/June 2007 |
