Tagged with 'interceptors'

Imagine following all state and local grease management regulations and STILL receiving a non-compliance fine because grease in your city's wastewater system was traced back to your kitchen. Your grease trap is working as it should. Your kitchen practices are on point. What is going on?  The answer is ... 

Even if a commercial kitchen has an effective grease interceptor properly installed and maintained, fats, oils and grease (FOG) can still escape into the wastewater system.

While no grease removal system is 100 percent effective, a properly maintained, modern grease trap can still remove more than 99 percent of FOG found in kitchen effluent. One of the biggest obstacles to grease removal, though, is the invisible thief called emulsion.

Emulsion is a “fine dispersion of minute droplets of one liquid in another in which it is not soluble or miscible.” So what does that mean in plain English? And what can you do about it?

The federal government takes grease seriously. Very seriously. In fact, the Department of Justice is ready, and willing, to issue federal jail time to any individual who knowingly violates the Clean Water Act, a standing tenet of which is proper grease disposal.

Just ask Mobile, Ala.’s DHS Inc. In 2011, the president and manager were charged in a 43-count indictment with violations of the Clean Water Act, as well as conspiracy and fraud. Their company, which was hired to remove the FOGs from grease interceptors, was, ironically, allegedly dumping the collected grease directly into local sewer systems — the same systems they were being paid to protect.

Grease interceptors do more than just keep fats, oils and grease out of the wastewater system. Properly maintained grease intereceptors protect your community's environment in a number of ways.

In 1884, Nathaniel Whiting patented the first grease interceptor design. These oversized, concrete boxes are still the default choice for many in the food-service industry.

Though innovative at the time, the design of these concrete interceptors has changed very little over the past 130 years and is fraught with problems in today’s world. 

Traditional concrete interceptors range in size from 300 or so gallons to several thousand. Though there are a few different designs, they all rely on the same principle — gravity.

Wastewater from a commercial kitchen flows down through the tank, where food particles sink to the bottom and oil rises to the top. The grease-free water in the middle then exits the tank and enters the public sewage lines.

Though these grease interceptors do the job, they don't necessarily do it well, do it efficiently or do it economically.