A company wanted to develop a book that would have the chemical properties and handling requirements for over 5,000 chemicals. Much of this data had to be searched and extracted from pubic sources. The data was in varying formats and quality. I wrote extraction routines to extract the data. Once the data was extracted, it had to be verified and transferred to a database. I created a database to compile the data from all the sources, which allowed the tracking of missing data.
Category: Forensics
Brownfield Cleanup
A prior landfill was to be used for the development of a large combined cycle power plant. A Budget of 2.5 MM was allocated for the initial investigation and cleanup of the site. The first step was to set a grid to identify the hot spots on the site that required further investigation. This was done by setting up a grid and perform core samples of each grid.
A Brownfield cleanup plan was submitted to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Once it was approved the remediation of the site began. The total cost for the initial remediation was $700,000 a savings of over $1.5 MM.
Fire in Abatement Containment
A fire occurred on the 9th floor in an asbestos abatement area of a twenty-story office building. The decontamination chamber was destroyed and the polyethylene barriers melted. The smoke from the fire rose to the upper floors and the water putting out the fire traveled to the basement. This created a need to survey the extent of the asbestos contamination and a design and specification for cleaning up the building. The entire building was shut down for this investigation.
For the areas above the fire where smoke had risen, the survey of this building included collection of settled soot on top of papers in offices. These results were compared to settled dust in areas not affected by the soot. The soot showed it contained asbestos and therefore all contents affected by the soot had to be cleaned or disposed.
The areas below the fire were more easily identified in areas of water damaged materials. While the materials were still wet, these areas were cleaned up and containment barriers were installed.
Evaluation of Paint Booth
A manufacturer wanted to expand their operation of the paint booth. The paint booth’s capacity was limited by the emissions of Hexavalent Chromium.
The existing paint boot had a filtration system to collect the overspray as a primary control device. A previous consultant suggested adding a water scrubber as a secondary control device. They proposed to monitor the discharge water stream to show that the scrubber was in proper operation.
Adding a scrubber as a secondary control device is not an efficient use of control technology. Further, measuring the concentration in the water discharge stream does not effectively measure the control. If the filtration system collected more materials, then the hexavalent chrome going to the scrubber would be reduced and the concentration in the discharge would be less.
I decided to look at the entire process. The paint in the spray booth was a mixture of 3 component paint mixture, which only one has hexavalent chrome. The Hexavalent Chrome emissions were calculated by assuming all of the Hexavalent Chrome that was in the paint were emitted.
The procedure called for mixing the paint for 30 minutes prior to spraying. I had an independent laboratory test the mixture after 30 minutes. The hexavalent chromium in the combine mixture was reduced to Tri-valent Chrome and considerably less before the mixing of the 3 components. The manufacturer was able to increase the production without adding additional air pollution control devices.
Forensic Schedule Analysis
After a devastating hurricane severely damaged a large metal manufacturing facility, the owner decided to consolidate their site from two manufacturing sites to a single more efficient site. The insurer argued that this consolidation caused delays restoring the site and therefore would not cover the loss claimed in the business interruption portion of the loss. The closed site was built in the early 20th century and was built in the current flood plain. As most of the buildings required complete reconstruction, the site would be required to be filled above the flood plain and the buildings would have to be constructed using current codes. In addition, the existing equipment would have to be removed and stored and the current buildings would have to be demolished.
The adjacent site was well documented during construction with photographic evidence that were in the state archives. This allowed us to establish the exact timeline for each phase of construction. We used the actual demolition of the closed site for the demolition portion of the schedule. We used these schedule elements to establish a theoretical timeline for the rebuilding of the closed site. This analysis showed that the consolidation of both sites into one actually took less time than to completely rebuild the closed site. This analysis was used in settlement negotiations with the insurer.
Roof Vent Overflow
A manufacturing company had filter press that had too much back pressure and occasionally when the filters were back washed the vents spilled materials on to the roof. The company was not able isolate this to a specific product or process. The spillage onto the roof caused rusting to the sheet metal. All other parts of the process were performing according to design conditions. I designed a trough to collect any spillage from the vents and piped them to the process sewer.
Asbestos Abatement Investigation
A security worker in 2012 brought an action against a renovation contractor in who removed asbestos containing fire proofing materials in a portion of the building that they did not have access to. The project took place in the early 1980’s when the asbestos regulations were in their infancy.
I discovered there was a boiler replacement project with a different contractor that occurred around the same time of the renovation to the office building. The fireproofing in the office building was removed under containment conditions. The boiler room insulation was removed as an open demolition project. The boiler and associated equipment had was insulated. At the time of construction of the boiler room the thermal insulation was an asbestos containing material.
Insurance Recovery Investigation
In an insurance case involving hurricane damage to a large manufacturing plant, we received over 100 GB of data from the client. This involved photos, cost estimates, repair estimates for each piece of major equipment, weather data, depositions, building investigation reports and other related information.
We organized and sorted the data so the hurricane damage to each of 2100 pieces of equipment could be evaluated against wind damage and flood damage. The equipment included large cranes, roll presses, CNC Machines, industrial lathes, boring machines and others. The equipment was sorted by type of equipment, building damage and location within the building to aid in this evaluation.
Each component of the machine was evaluated in its sensitivity to moisture and the repairs required to repair the machine. We were therefore able to determine the exact components of the machine that were damaged by the wind driven rain and the components that were only damaged by the flood waters.
Oleum Tank Cleanout
An Oleum tank required repairs during a summer shutdown. Oleum is a solution of various compositions of sulfur trioxide in sulfuric acid which is not corrosive to carbon steel. The tank had to be emptied and cleaned before repairs could be made. Once the concentration of sulfuric acid drops below 100% sulfuric acid, it becomes very corrosive to the carbon steel tank. The air space above the Oleum is also corrosive on a hot humid day. I had the bolted cover removed and then the oleum emptied. I then had soda ash to the tank and flooded it with water. As a result, the tank was emptied and cleaned without further damage to the existing tank.
Reestablishment of Clear Water Sewer
A chemical manufacturing plant had two sewer systems, a storm sewer and a process sewer that were in the past combined into a single sewer. Years later, added development caused the combine flow of the sewer exceed the design capacity of the treatment system during some storm events.
An investigation of the feasibility of separating at least a portion of the storm sewer was conducted. As no as-built copies of the complete sewer system were available, each manhole and source had to be mapped out.
After a complete update of the sewer maps, it was discovered that a neighboring property that was allowed to tie into the system also recently built a large warehouse that tied into the system. It was this stream, that was diverted to a new storm sewer system.