Industrial Wastewater Reclamation
CARL A. RAMBOW, President
Montgomery Research, Inc.
Pasadena, California
It is surprising how often one encounters a situation wherein the obvious lies
within reach and yet is not realized. The primary business of an industrial plant
is production. The concerns of the plant manager include plant operation, production rate, labor costs, sales, material handling, and so forth. To him and to
his staff, wastewater treatment and disposal is a thorn in the side and a matter of
professional disinterest, by and large. Viewed in this light, it isn't too surprising
that sometimes the obvious goes overlooked.
A recent example brought this home so forcibly that it inspired this paper. In
the case in question, the wastewater from a large plant was being discharged, with
only minor treatment, to surface water. With the recent advent of stringent controls on surface water quality in the United States, some change in operation became necessary in order to comply with the new regulations. The industry has
been considering building an activated sludge treatment system to great the wastes
from the plant, in order to continue discharging them to the surface water that had
received them for over 50 years. This major industry was unaware that there was
a County Sanitation Districts System, that his property taxes supported a large part
of this System and entitled him to some capacity in it with additional capacity
available at a nominal charge, and that a 60-in. trunk sewer ran right through the
middle of his plant.
In approaching this type of problem from the consultant's viewpoint, we may
rely on what is called the Systems Approach. This means what engineers have always done; and that is, to look at the entire problem rather than at the specific
facet identified as a problem. In other words, given the end of a waste line, with
a waste of quality X and quantity Y coming out of it, what does one do with it?
It would behoove the person solving the problem to look just a bit and see whether
perhaps the quality or the quantity of the waste can be modified in some way
rather than just set out to treat the waste. This is a simplified characterization of
the Systems Approach, but it is of value to keep this concept in mind when confronted with a waste disposal poblem.
Given an industrial wastewater disposal problem, there are many alternatives
to consider, including treatment and discharge, injection to the ground, etc.
Why consider reclamation of water and its reuse? There are four principal reasons. The first is the saving of water. In the East and Midwest, where water is
plentiful, this may not be a consideration. In the arid parts of the country this
can be important.
The second is to avoid pollution of surface waters or ground waters by reclaiming the wastewater. Today, with the emphasis on pollution control at every
level from the Federal on down, this is important.
The third consideration is the saving of money that may accompany reuse of
water, whether it means saving on the purchase of new water, saving on the purchase of facilities and operation of treatment plants for avoiding water pollution,
or saving in treatment of water required for industrial use, or a combination of
these.    The best example of the latter is the reclamation of boiler water or cool-
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