PILOT PLANT EVALUATION OF THE 1974 BATE A GUIDELINES FOR
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY
W. A. Storey, Chief Engineer
Milliken Service Corporation
Spartanburg, South Carolina 29304
E. J. Schroeder, Industrial Waste Manager
Engineering-Science, Inc.
Atlanta, Georgia 30329
GENERAL PROJECT BACKGROUND
On July 5, 1974 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published in the
Federal Register (Vol. 39, No. 130) effluent guidednes and standards for textde industry
point source dischargers. These guidelines required best practicable control technology
currently avadable (BPT) to be met by July 1, 1977 and best avadable technology econo-
micady achievable (BATEA) to be achieved by July 1, 1983. On October 1, 1974 the
American Textde Manufacturers Institute (ATMI) fded a petition for review of the textde industry BATEA guidednes with the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. ATMI was
joined in this action by the Northern Textde Association (NTA) and the Carpet and Rug
Institute (CRI). The parties involved subsequently fded a joint motion to delay the petition
pending the review of the results of a cooperative study undertaken to evaluate the technical and economic achievabdity and impact on the textde industry of the promulgated
BATEA discharge dmitations.
The objective of this cooperative study was to evaluate the treatment efficiency of
processes identified as BATEA by EPA's Effluent Guidelines Division on textde industry
wastewaters. The technical phase of this study consisted of defining the advanced waste
treatment (AWT) processes to be tested, designing and constructing pdot units, surveying
and selecting textde plants for pdot plant study, performing pdot plant studies, evaluating
pdot plant data and preparing conceptual BATEA plant designs, developing key aspects
of the cost functions for estimating BATEA costs, and preparing project reports. Engineering-
Science, Inc., (ES) was selected as the engineering consultant to conduct the technical
phase of the study.
SELECTION OF REPRESENTATIVE TEXTILE PLANTS
To ensure the success of the study and validity of results, it was necessary to select a
group of plants that would be representative of the textde dyeing and finishing industry.
Table I presents the EPA's subcategory designations as wed as type of production associated
with each and also given are the number of plants where pdot testing was done. The fodowing criteria were used to select the participating plants:
1. The textile mills must have operating secondary wastewater treatment facdities.
2. The effluent from the existing wastewater treatment facilities must be generally within
NPDES permit levels.
3. The wastewater treatment effluent must normally be discharged directly to a natural
water course.
4. The textde manufacturing company must be willing to participate in the study (financially and otherwise).
5. The textile mill must be located such that it was compatible with location and other
constraints of the study activities.
The selections were made from a group of candidate plants identified by ATMI, NTA and
CRI. These plants were coded to maintain confidentiality of production data and other site
specific information.
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