Oakland, CA, Sept. 30, 2010 – Ventura Foods, the maker of Smart Balance®margarine and Marie’s®and Hidden Valley®dressings, has successfully deployed a new system for removing fat, oil and grease (FOG) from wastewater at it's Ontario, Calif., manufacturing plant.
Ventura has added a Fogbuster™ device to its existing treatment system for wastewater from the plant’s margarine and vegetable oil manufacturing operations. The Fogbuster is helping the plant comply with local wastewater regulations, recovering waste oil in concentrated form for resale, reducing expenses for treatment chemicals and improving the reliability and performance of the entire treatment system.
“Our challenge was to remain within the city permit limits to discharge wastewater into the sewage system, which kept our wastewater treatment systems operating at maximum capacity,” said Tom Rochester, maintenance engineering manager for Ventura’s Ontario plant.
The FOG system has eased staff workload by removing the oil upstream in the process, so it doesn’t have to be treated chemically. The recovered oil is being sold for recycling into biodiesel and other products. Chemical usage for wastewater treatment at the plant is down about 30%, Rochester said.
"We’re projecting a payback on our investment of just over a year, so we’re very pleased with,” the system, he said
“The recovered oil is key to our return on investment, because if you separate the oil without using chemicals, it more than doubles the resale value for recycling," said John C. Brown, Director of Safety and Environmental Affairs at Ventura Foods. "The Fogbuster is recovering oil of 95% purity and in much greater volume than what we were producing previously."
For more information on the Fogbuster system, visit the company's website at www.fogbustersinc.com.
