A company wanted Pollution Prevention Plans and SPCC plans for nine of their many facilities. Most of the facilities had automotive and vehicle repair facilities, barracks, meeting halls and offices. In addition, each facility had storage tanks, flammable storage cabinets, grounds maintenance equipment. I developed plans for each of the 9 facilities that provided a prescriptive plan for meeting compliance with environmental regulations and to reduce waste disposal costs. The plans were used as a basis to create a model plan that could be used throughout their facilities.
Category: Waste Reduction
HPCH Yield Improvement
A company manufactured High Purity Calcium Hydroxide that had low yields. The annual capacity of the plant was relatively low at less than 10 tons per year. I installed measuring devices to measure rinse water flows and had samples analyzed for product. This had accounted for a portion of the product loss. Steps were taken to reduce this loss. In addition, there were losses associated with the rotary filter and material handling that were identified and corrected. Because of the low annual production and the high density of the small spills of material on the process floor had a significant impact in yields. Steps were made to prevent this material from spilling or reworking the spilled material. After the measures were taken the yields were back up to design specifications.
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.