OCR Text |
Show tive benefits-the use of sludge as a byproduct, for example, and the reuse of sewage effluent. A Task Committee In Search of Byproducts Industrial research and dissemination of tech- nological information are the objectives of the National Technical Task Committee on Indus- trial Wastes sponsored by the Public Health Serv- ice and made up of industrial, State, and Federal Government representatives. This committee will endeavor to assemble information on indus- trial waste processes, practices, research projects, and problems for which no solution is known, and make this information available to industry. The committee has four major task groups: food industries (canning, dairy, corn, fermenta- tion, distillers, beet sugar, and meat); mineral products (iron and steel, nonferrous metals, coal and other mining, petroleum, byproduct coke and gas); chemical processing (chemical, textile, pulp, paper and paperboard, tanning, rubber, and electric-plating); and general industry (au- tomotive, electrical equipment). Other indus- tries such as railroads, lumber, paint and varnish, and power are expected to participate in this coordinated government-industry attack on the industrial waste problem. The manufacturing activities that now con- tribute the larger share of pollution to our water- ways are foods, beverages, textiles, leather, chemicals, petroleum, gas, iron and steel, non- ferrous metals, rubber, paper, and mining, in- cluding coal and oil-well drilling. Nearly all these are already represented on the National Technical Task Committee. Although industrial waste utilization in the form of byproducts is not the normal expectation in manufacturing, especially in smaller concerns, individual examples of waste recovery and con- sequent pollution reduction hold greatest hope for assisting in solving the industrial pollution problem. Some examples are striking. A chemical company ordered by a State health department to abate its pollution studied its waste and discovered a high vitamin content which it began to extract. Today the vitamins are the company's main product. A steel company in the Ohio Valley, after building a treatment plant at a cost of $516,000 to recover ore from blast furnace flue dust that was being dumped into the river, found that treatment was not only paying for its operation, but made a profit of $581,000 in the first year of operation. A division of a large automobile corporation is skimming the oil from waste collection tanks and selling it to a local concern that purifies and packages it for consumers. The corporation's return equals the cost of recovery. The distillery industry for years has extracted dried grains and protein concentrates for sale as cattle food. A steel company in New Jersey gives its pickle liquor to a local firm that uses it to make iron sponge for gas purifiers. A chemical company in Texas formerly dump- ing 100,000 tons of aluminum chloride annually now salvages more than half for sale to a paper mill as a substitute for alum. Another company is making high-grade molasses from citrus peel liquid discharge. In general, the recovery of industrial waste material as a byproduct has a record of a mod- erate return on the operation rather than big profits. Nor is byproduct recovery of waste ma- terial an extensive practice in industry. Re- search by industry and university staffs stimulated by funds in the Pollution Control Act of 1948 and by the National Technical Task Committee is expected to improve the situation. From Sewage to Fertilizer So far as byproduct recovery is concerned, pri- vate industry's record is superior to that of muncipalities. Only a few cities-Chicago, Mil- waukee, Grand Rapids, Toledo, and Pasadena, for instance-recover and sell their sewage sludge as fertilizer. Other cities pay for its removal or incineration. More than 18 million tons of sludge are destroyed annually, and (based on the $2-a- ton removal rate paid in the Nation's Capital) at 193 |