When Product Recovery Systems Are Sound Investments
As advancements in technology have led to smaller, faster, and more durable process equipment, industrial manufacturers are eyeing new hardware to boost product yield in their new and existing facilities. This fact is evident as capital spending figures from the top 37 companies in the food and beverage industry topped $18.5 billion in 2014, a nearly 15 percent increase over the previous year.
Among the frenzy of new projects lining up in the near future, we can expect a good chunk of change to go toward environmental management programs at these facilities, with wastewater treatment infrastructure representing a meaningful slice of the project pie.
As with all major expenditures, whether or not to go forward comes down to the figure at the bottom of the ledger and a couple questions:
- Will it make me more than it costs?
- How long until it pays itself off?
Arriving at definitive answers to these questions means considering a lot of different financial variables including costs for equipment, installation, training, operations, and maintenance.
One modern approach in wastewater process design that has opened up interesting conversations in project budgeting is the idea of building product recovery systems. The basic tenet of the process is to either:
- Recover the product because it holds commodity value and can be sold to a buyer or reprocessed in-house;
- Recover the product to reduce the load on the downstream process equipment and achieve lower operational costs; or
- Some combination of both.
An example of the first scenario comes from a rendering facility in Australia. They installed a dissolved air flotation (DAF) system to recover oily solids that entered the waste stream during plant wash-down. These solids are then reprocessed into tallow, a commodity product with various industrial uses. The product recovery system was a $200,000 investment that took four months to get online. In the end the investment was well worth it as the system recovers enough product to add $2 million a year in revenues.
An example of scenario 2 uses a similar equipment set-up, however the motivations are completely different. An automotive manufacturing plant uses heavy oils in their process so naturally, during equipment sanitation, some of that oil is washed away as part of the wastewater. The product recovery system is designed to capture as much of those oils as possible without adding any chemicals to separate them from the water. The effect here is to reduce the chemical costs associated with removing all the oil in another separation tank. This product recovery system saves tens of thousands of dollars a year in chemical costs.
A third example, this time for scenario 3, comes from an oilseed processing facility. An oil/water separation system recovers free and emulsified oils for reprocessing, thereby reducing the chemicals required for clarifying the wastewater to a quality suitable for discharge into the sewer. The product recovery system adds to the plant yield and reduces operational costs in the wastewater treatment process.
Each product recovery system in these examples has a positive financial impact in the plants where they operate. There are a lot of different industrial applications where a system such can prove to be a worthwhile investment:
- Poultry and meat processing
- Rendering
- Vegetable oils
- Metals, mining, and manufacturing
- Refineries
With as much capital as will be committed to environmental projects in the coming years, product recovery in wastewater systems should definitely become part of the conversation. The scale may not always tip in the direction of product recovery and that’s okay. At least due diligence was paid to the idea. Just keep in mind that sometimes a $200,000 investment can pay you back tenfold.
About FRC Systems International:
FRC Systems International designs and builds product recovery systems for organizations in the food, heavy manufacturing, and oil & gas industries. With over 500 installations in more than 20 countries, FRC has established a reputation as a trusted wastewater solutions provider. Learn more at www.frcsystems.com or follow FRC Systems on LinkedIn.