Oil Skimmer Improves Efficiency and Reduced Oil Discharge at Lord Baltimore Uniform Company
Lord Baltimore Uniform is an independently owned company based in Baltimore, Maryland. Owner and President Ken Gore Jr. and his staff of 55 provide outstanding garment rental, linen, and dust control services throughout the Mid-Atlantic States. Lord Baltimore services companies of all shapes and sizes throughout Maryland, Washington DC, northern Virginia, Delaware, and southern Pennsylvania.
A large part of their commitment to excellence involves laundering a variety of items, including uniforms, linens, and mats. The facility currently processes around 2.34 million pounds of laundry per year, or approximately 9,000 pounds per workday. The 45,000 square foot laundry facility operates a single shift.
The Problem: Cost and Compliance Challenges
Lord Baltimore Uniform, as with all industrial laundries, is a water intensive facility. With a usage rate of 2,750 gallons per hour, they have to balance the escalating cost of water and wastewater services against increasingly stringent government regulations. Another factor to consider is the trend toward tighter TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbons) restrictions from wastewater treatment facilities. As Gore succinctly puts it, he needs to “maintain profitability and growth while keeping 500 gallons of oil a year out of the Chesapeake Bay wastewater plants.”
Adopting the Abanaki Solution
Charged with this formidable task, Gore began inquiring how other commercial uniform facilities were handling their own oily wastewater challenges. The search led him to Abanaki Corporation, an international leader in oil skimming solutions. “A member of our cost group had purchased an Abanaki industrial oil skimmer and was pleased with the results. We were able to see one of the products in action, at Gallagher Uniform in Michigan,” Gore says. Shortly thereafter, he contacted Abanaki and began working with a sales rep to determine the best skimmer for their needs.
The Model 8 oil skimmer can remove oil at a rate of 40 gallons per hour. These units can also be fitted with accessories such as heaters, debris rakes, and belt and tail pulley tethers.
The Solution: A Model 8 Oil Grabber Oil Skimmer was installed at the Lord Baltimore facility in October 2004. It is one of Abanaki’s flagship products, a highly dependable and effective means of oil removal from water and water-based solutions. Designed to remove up to 40 gallons of oil per hour, the industrial oil skimmer proved a good first line of defense against oil contamination in the water pretreatment system at Lord Baltimore. The unit has been known to reduce oil content to less than five parts per million depending on the characteristics of the liquid being skimmed.
Like many laundries, the company operates on a two-pit system: one for processing heavily soiled drain water and the other for clean drain water. To prevent lint and other solids from clogging the machinery, Lord Baltimore installed a b system over the 6000-gallon capacity heavily soiled pit.
Laundry wastewater is first pumped to an elevated station and run through a screen. Next, strained wastewater flows into a holding tank where it is withdrawn by a feed pump. It is in this holding tank that the skimmer was installed. Mounted near a clean water drain, the liquid here has sufficient time to dwell so that oil and water can separate naturally—something mechanical oil skimmers like the Model 8 rely on for efficient removal.
Industrial Oil Skimmer Reduces Treatment Burden, Delivers Cleaner Wastewater Performance
Similar to other industrial oil skimmers from Abanaki, the Model 8 utilizes a continuously moving belt and wiper system to efficiently remove oil and other hydrocarbon contaminants from the surface of wastewater. First, the belt–which operates on a motor and pulley system–runs through the wastewater. As it travels through the oil-laden water, oil clings to the belt. That belt travels over a head pulley and through tandem wiper blades where collected oil can be scraped off both sides of the belt and discharged.
Other features of the Model 8 include a tail pulley with 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 mounted on the tank. If turbulent conditions do exist, an optional tether and cage assembly are available to prevent the tail pulley from becoming dislodged.
Measurable Results to Come: Although it is too soon to calculate exact results at Lord Baltimore, Gore anticipates the Abanaki unit will help manage overall operating costs as part of a quality effluent management system. For now, he sums up his current satisfaction with the Model 8 industrial oil skimmer in just four words: “It does its job.”
