Manufacturers Saving Water

In 1987, Paul Nicolas foresaw that water was going to become a scarce natural resource; in 2008, his company installed a system that is going to stop the discharge of nearly 1 million gallons of water into Burbank sewers. Everyone’s a winner. This is cleantech at its finest, some say. No hype, no carbon trading credits; just solid science, real-world application, and quantifiable results that directly impact a company’s bottom line and the local environment as well. The system Wastech designed also removes toxic chemicals used in manufacturing from the waste water; returning pure, distilled water back into the process line. “We make two products,” said Nicolas, who is the founder and president of Wastech Controls & Engineering, Inc. “One neutralizes the other recycles.” That’s a great simplification. The company designs, fabricates, ships and services its products in an industrial park in Chatsworth. Their customized, automated systems are primarily used in the United States. Some of their systems are in place in Asia, “but that’s not our focus .. they’re mainly for U.S. businesses doing work overseas,” said Nicolas. In Burbank, Senior Aerospace SSP was searching for a solution to two problems: how to deal with excess levels of fluoride in the water they discharged everyday, and how to reduce their water usage. “We were discharging elevated levels of fluoride into the sewer system,” said John Kelly, Senior Aerospace facilities manager, while also “averaging well over one million gallons per day” of water going straight into the sewer. That’s the equivalent of five average-size swimming pools a day. So they called in Wastech to design an automated system that would address both problems. Two systems Kelly boils it down: “What it is is two individual systems: One is a deionization system and that’s where we treat our rinse water by removing all the positive and negative ions. It’s like a sponge and as the water goes through a polymer it absorbs all the metals and waste.” In the next step the water is removed using a vacuum process with about 1,000 gallons of water per day being recouped just through captured condensation. The toxic chemicals that are removed in the procedure are then more like a solid waste. “Basically we went from shipping out thousands of gallons of our wastewater rinse water and spent baths to about 600 gallons a month now of concentrated,” said Kelly. “So, again, it’s just a huge savings.” It’s also going to be good for the City of Burbank, which contracts with a private company, United Water, to manage their wastewater operations. Oscar Iniguez, environmental compliance inspector, said that less water going through the plant means less stress on the wastewater treatment plant in general. And less fluoride in the water also lessens the burden on the system. Once the Senior Aerospace system is fully operational they are going to be a zero discharger, he said. “That definitely will be good for us.” Cleantech growth Back at Wastech, Nicolas said the company has been on a steady growth trajectory over the past couple of years, in large part due to the increased emphasis on environmental responsibility. He is presently looking for more space in the Chatsworth area to facilitate the faster growth he anticipates in the near future. The biggest challenge, though, is not space: it’s people. “The hardest people to find are engineers and shop people,” said Nicolas. The last hire they made took two months, and Wastech ultimately hired someone without experience who will have to be trained. In fact one of the reasons he’s only considering space in the general Chatsworth area is because he doesn’t want to negatively impact his existing staff of 30, many of whom live in the area.