31    TREATMENT OF SYNTHETIC HYDRAULIC FLUIDS BY
ULTRAFILTRATION AND BIOLOGICAL TREATMENT:
A CASE HISTORY
Jasvinder S. Dang, Process Engineer
SEC Donohue Inc., Greenville, South Carolina 29615
Ted V. Clark, Manager,
Process Engineering Department
SEC Donohue Inc., Greenville, South Carolina 29615
Dean V. Glenn, Safety and Environmental Engineer
TRW Steering & Suspension Division
Rogersville, Tennessee 37857
INTRODUCTION
The TRW Steering and Suspension Division (TRW) in Rogersville, Tennessee manufactures metal
automotive parts during which they generate process wastewaters that contain free and emulsified
oils, soluble organic materials (COD, BOD), and low levels of metals such as copper, chromium,
nickel, and zinc. Synthetic fluids from machining, cutting, honing, and hydraulic applications constitute a majority of the emulsified oils. Process wastewaters were pretreated in a facility consisting of
equalization, free oil separation, acid splitting, and gravity separation in a reactor clarifier. The
pretreated wastewater was then combined with and diluted by non-process discharges such as sanitary
wastewater, air conditioning condensate, and miscellaneous discharges from the plant that did not
pass through the treatment facility. The combined wastewater was discharged to the City of Rogers-
ville's publicly owned treatment works (POTW).
In 1985, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the United
States Environmental Protection Agency mandated the City of Rogersville to improve the efficiency
and operation of their treatment plant and required the city to implement a pre-treatment program for
all its industrial users. The combined discharge from TRW was incapable of meeting the revised
pretreatment discharge standards for BOD, COD, oil and grease and metals due to inadequacies in
their pretreatment system. TRW recognized a need to upgrade their pretreatment system to meet the
new pretreatment standards and retained the services of SEC Donohue to conduct an engineering
study consisting of the following components:
• preliminary screening of technologies to identify options feasible for separation and
removal of free and emulsified oils, removal of soluble organics, and metals
• selection of a technically and economically viable pretreatment process
• bench scale treatability studies to confirm feasibility of selected process and to develop
preliminary design criteria
• conceptual and detailed design of a full scale pretreatment system
This paper summarizes the results from the engineering study conducted by SEC Donohue. A
process flow diagram for the selected full scale pretreatment system is also presented. Construction of
the full-scale pretreatment system was completed in 1987 and TRW has been in compliance with the
new pretreatment limitations for the various parameters.
47th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings, 1992 Lewis Publishers, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan 48118.
Printed in U.S.A.
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