Financial Return from
Industrial Waste Pretreatment
J. S. REICH, Chief
Industrial Wastes Section
Philadelphia Water Department
Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania
INTRODUCTION
In a city of the industrial concentration of Philadelphia, a biological treatment plant could be plagued by a multitude of problems caused by the wastes
from the industries.
When considering the mutual responsibilities of industry and its municipality
one must realize that it is a two way street. The municipality is obligated to accept the wastes from industry while industry is obligated to make the wastes they
discharge acceptable. For industry to comply with the requirements of the municipality the simplest and least costly methods of making their wastes acceptable
are those which create the least opposition from industry.
This paper will cover a number of applications of treatment which cover these
points.
While there are a number of industries which have wastes which must be pre-
treated, this paper will be limited to those which show a financial return above
the costs of pretreatment. At the same time, keeping the methods as simple as
possible, methods of pretreatment adopted by these plants and an indication of the
savings in products, chemicals and utilities will be outlined.
There are many plants in the same general type of industries, and thus, examples of both large and small plates which may have achieved similar results by
different methods will be presented. In the requirements for pretreatment of
wastes these three parameters are used: 1) Are the wastes readily treated together
with sanitary wastes in our disposal plants; 2) Are the wastes toxic to personnel in
the sewers or disposal plants in the quantities discharged; and 3) Will the wastes
impede the hydraulic characteristics of the sewers?
The approach to the solution of industrial waste problems is rather unique in
municipal circles in that one frequently project engineers the method of pretreatment and then gets into the plant to suggest changes in operation which have a
dual effect, i. e., reduces the industrial polluting load on the disposal plant and
shows a financial return to the industry utilizing the changed operation.
PLATING INDUSTRY
One of the outstanding examples of this approach to the solution of a waste
problem was a large industry which plated a number of different articles with
silver. They did both hand and automatic machine plating. In the hand operation they took their pieces out of the plating bath and plunged them into running
rinses then on a conveyor line to a drier. It was suggested moving the rinse tanks
to permit a drain to return to the plating unk, that they have the first rinse tank
filled with de-ionized water which could be fortified and returned to the plating
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