Our third annual Waste Treatment Symposium, Sept. 10-11, in Eureka, Mo., attracted 100 pumpers from as far away as Alaska, Florida and Mexico. Bill Detry, who has attended all three events, traveled from Guam. Participants felt that the symposium provided an abundance of great advice and information, and gave them a better perspective of the dewatering industry. They especially enjoyed getting their hands on products they had seen only in magazines.
The symposium consists of classroom training, visiting a dewatering facility, watching vendor-provided equipment in action and networking. Networking begins the moment the doors open and is in full swing before the scheduled roundtable discussions. The opportunity to develop contacts to draw upon after everyone goes home is a terrific value for the dollars invested.
Classroom highlights
The most talked about presentations this year were the two on recovering oil from grease trap waste. With the cost of diesel fuel approaching $5 a gallon, the time for this technology has arrived.
Frank Burt of Burt Waste Inc. Equipment in Vancleave, Miss., invented the SV-2 extractor. Company representative Donny Mecke explained that grease trap waste is discharged through a filter in the processing boiler, then heated to separate the oil, which floats to the top. Reclaimed oil also fires the SV-2, which is similar in size to some automatic septage/grease trap screening devices. Mecke said pumpers interested in the unit must already pump or process 20,000 gpd or more of grease trap waste and have a disposal plan for the remaining slurry.
Greg Jarvies of American Waste Removal in Albuquerque, N.M., pumps nothing but grease traps and needed a reliable way to handle the material. His process heats the unfiltered material in a tank. As the oil rises, the water and solids drop to the bottom. Mecke says 2 percent of grease trap waste is oil, but Jarvies believes the amount is 3 to 7 percent. In either case, with the grease and oil removed, disposing of the slurry should be easier, as now it can be land-applied or discharged at treatment plants accepting septage.
The recovered oil is valuable and marketable. Another presenter, Plant Oil Powered Diesel Fuel Systems Inc., or POP, in Albuquerque, currently pays $1.20 per gallon for reclaimed oil. Jarvies sells his oil to POP. Company representative Claude Convisser said they convert the oil into POP diesel fuel, which burns like No. 2 diesel in engines.
POP filters and dewaters the oil, then mixes in additives that prevent the fuel from gumming and reacting with metal parts in fuel systems. Convisser explained that Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil. Modern diesel engines are no different — with the addition of an alternative fuel system.
When asked to explain the difference between POP diesel and biodiesel, Convisser said that although derived from vegetable oil, biodiesel requires a complicated, costly chemical process to arrive at the end product, but burns in standard fuel systems. POP diesel sells for $3 a gallon, and the company sells an engine conversion kit. POP is working to have the fuel certified, so converting to it won’t void vehicle warranties.
If POP pays $1.20 per gallon for extracted oil and sells the fuel for $3 a gallon, the net cost of $1.80 per gallon is attractive. However, neither company could defend the economics of the reclamation process, except to say that the numbers were positive and they are establishing hard evidence.
Nobody doubts that the concept is wonderful. BWI made a believer out of me when I saw the SV-2 at the factory last year. The design is simple, and BWI has sold 12 units since the 2007 symposium.
Responding to a pumper who anticipated burning all his recovered oil just fueling the extraction process, Mecke said no. It’s a net positive. At the end of the year, BWI has oil left over after using it in the reclamation process and heating the whole facility.
Review the presentations
Wednesday’s educational courses also included PowerPoint presentations that are a free download at www.nawt.org. Topics covered:
1) “What are My Resources and How Do I Fit?” by Tom Frank, Tim Frank Septic Tank Cleaning Co., Huntsburg, Ohio.
2) “Unit Treatment Processes, What Is Out There?” by Therese Wheaton, Crystal Environmental Services Inc., Springboro, Pa.
3) “Meeting Section 503 Requirements” by Dave Gustafson, University of Minnesota.
4) “Case History: Accurate Dewatering Service” by Therese Wheaton, Crystal Environmental.
5) “Polymers” by Jim Millard, Aqua Ben Corp., Oswego, Ill.
6) “Screening” by Marshall Blomquist, Lakeside Mfg. Co., Bartlett, Ill.
7) “Writing a Business Plan – Decision to Treat Your Own Waste” by Ron Mueller, Small Business Development Center, St. Louis, Mo.
Every vendor had 20 minutes to explain his equipment or product. We heard from:
• Wes Bond, FKC Co. Screw Press, Port Angeles, Wash.
• Jonathan Campbell, Big Fish Environmental, Charlevoix, Mich.
• Steve Oftelie, Fournier Industries Inc., Thetford Mines, Quebec, Canada.
• Wayne Colson, USA BlueBook, Gurnee, Ill.
• Phil Hodes, Progress Tanks, Arthur, Ill.
Field trip
The day before the symposium began we held the NAWT vacuum truck technician training. Pumpers new to the business and those who had yet to purchase a truck asked to see a tank cleaned. We obliged and pumped the Holiday Inn’s grease trap Thursday morning. More than 30 people attended, and now we had the genuine article for our dewatering demonstrations that afternoon.
Experience taught us that compressing the classroom session into one day is too intense. This year, we extended it and returned indoors to hear Greg Jarvies give his presentation on “Recovering Oil from Grease Trap Waste.”
Another new thing we did was to present the case history of our demonstration site before the tour. Tim Frank and Dave Flagg did the honors on David Flagg’s Septic Services in Union, Mo. He treats only septage and discharges grease trap waste at the St. Louis treatment plant. Giving people time to think about what they would see helped them ask better questions. Everybody approved of this approach.
At Flagg’s facility, Fournier, Crystal Environmental, and FKC were pressing septage and grease trap waste. We hooked Lakeside’s Fine Screen to the head of Flagg’s plant. When the trucks arrived, they dumped through it. Aqua Ben Corp. and Fort Bend Services Inc. mixed various polymers and sludge, enabling attendees to watch the different chemical reactions.
Fort Bend, a polymer manufacturer from Stafford, Texas, was new to our symposium, as was USA Bluebook, a mail order house for water and wastewater operations.
Orlando in 2009
The 2009 Waste Treatment Symposium will be Sept. 16-17 in Orlando, Fla. Our demonstration facility will be Select Processing of Orlando, run by Ralph and Steve Macchio. They started processing by screening and lime-stabilizing septage for land application, then evolved the operation into dewatering and discharging into the municipal collection system.
NAWT has retained Dave Gustafson and Jim Anderson from the University of Minnesota to turn the symposium’s classroom portion into a one-day course. The program, expected to be ready by Jan. 1, will travel around the country just like our vacuum truck technician training. That program is set for a one-day track in National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association Installer Academy on Dec. 8-9. Register for the NOWRA event and take the vacuum truck technician course at no additional charge.
If you’re considering processing septage, the symposium presents an overview of what is involved, but it is also an opportunity for those already dewatering to see what other people are doing. There is always something new to learn.
