Dewatering
If you are considering setting up your own processing plan or considering changing your current system for handling your liquid waste, you have certain goals and objectives that you want to accomplish. These might be cost savings, liability concerns, ability to handle your waste more efficiently.
No matter what equipment you use to accomplish your goals, you have basic items that need to be addressed in all cases. You usually are taking liquid waste that contains solids in varying degrees of concentration and separating this into two manageable waste streams (liquids and solids). Because these still need to be disposed of properly, they must meet the criteria for your area and the disposal options you choose. In most cases, it is best to use your local sewer district to hook into the sewer for your liquid discharge from your processing area. Typically the sewer district will issue you an industrial discharge permit, which will allow you to establish volumes and industrial limits for TSS (Total Suspended Solids) and BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand) plus possible others, again depending on your local waste water agency.
The solids that have been dewatered from your waste stream should at a minimum past the much used Paint Filter Test required by most landfills. The higher the solid content of your cake typically means more process volume can be hauled with less loads. However, dewatering systems that use filter aids or bulking agents in their process can have higher cake solids content and still require more loads hauled than a dewatering system that has a little lower solids content, due to increase solids added to the water stream. Your actual volume reduction will be determined on your solids concentration in your waste stream, your operator, pretreatment of the waste and dewatering equipment used. A typical combined waste can be reduced from 30,000 liquid gallons into 10 tons of disposable solids waste using Haul-A-Day’s “Cakemaker” Dewatering System.
