South Feather Water and Power Underscores Commitment to Clean Water & Efficient Power with Abanaki
A Model 8 Oil Grabber Success Story
South Feather Water and Power (SFWP)’s mission is layered. First, they need to provide cost effective power with minimal impact on the environment, and they also need to ensure a dependable supply of safe, quality drinking water for surrounding communities and agricultural users. Across the board, the California-based utility is committed to delivering water and power in the most economical, efficient, and publicly responsible of manners. It also is dedicated to providing its employees with a safe work environment. These commitments pushed SFWP to proactively seek out one of the industry’s best safeguards against the possibility of waste oil leaks into their water supply.
The Abanaki Alternative to Messy Sorbents for Waste Oil
Electrical Maintenance Supervisor John Davis is responsible for the upkeep of the hydroelectric generation facilities at SFWP. “Old generators have a tendency to leak oil, which can end up in the sump. Obviously, any discharge into the reservoir is unacceptable, so we’re always on the lookout for a proactive solution,” he says. Davis was impressed by what he thought was an excellent solution at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E): they had an Abanaki Model 8 Oil Grabber oil skimmer installed at a powerhouse to prevent rogue waste oil from leaking into their water supply.
“I started looking for an alternative to the method we had been using to remove oil from sumps– sorbents. While they can be effective, they’re also very messy and time consuming, so I started searching the Internet for oil skimmers,” Davis explains. In his search, he found the Abanaki website and discovered more about the Model 8.
Today, this very skimmer is mounted in a key power facility at SFWP. Its continuous belt and wiper action makes use of the differences in specific gravity and surface tension between oil and water. The belt, operating on a motor and pulley system, runs through contaminated liquid to pick up oils from the surface. After traveling over the head pulley, the belt passes through tandem wiper blades where waste oil is scraped off both sides of the belt and discharged into an Abanaki Oil Concentrator. From the oil concentrator, any residual water pickup is returned to the sump, and recovered oil is collected in a 55 gallon drum.
How is it working at South Feather Water and Power?
In use now for about a year, Davis revealed that the Model 8 has been a welcome addition to his staff’s routine. “The maintenance department really likes not having to manually remove oil. They no longer have to check on the sump as often or take the time out of routine maintenance checks to manually clean it,” Davis says. He also reported that the Model 8’s low maintenance design has been well received.
Low Maintenance Benefits of the Model 8
The Abanaki Model 8 Oil Grabber is designed to be a dependable and effective means of removing waste oil from water and water-based solutions. The skimmer can recover up to 40 gallons of oil per hour from fluid surfaces, and is considered a good choice for applications with fluctuating water levels. Model 8s can be used in tanks with depths as shallow as one foot or as deep as 100 feet.
The tail pulley has flanges that allow it to roll freely on the inside of the belt without becoming dislodged. It requires no bearings and does not need to be fastened to the tank. If turbulent conditions do exist, an optional tether and cage assembly is available to prevent the tail pulley from being dislodged. “We’re a small staff with a large area to cover. The Abanaki oil skimmer in place gives us one less thing to worry about,” Davis concludes.
