Brockton Hospital
Caught in a squeeze between increasing environmental regulations and overburdened waste water treatment facilities, many municipalities are regulating much more closely what customers discharge into sewage collection systems. For affected businesses and institutions, that often neccesitates a change in the status quo. Such was the case at the Brockton (Mass.) Hospital, a century old, 302-bed facility with a kitchen serving 1500 or more meals a day.
Edward Walsh Jr., a plant maintenance manager of Brockton Hospital, summarized the dilemma facing the hospital this way. "When the Brockton Water and Sewer Department said we had to stop exceeding the allowable limit of grease in our kitchen drain water, the question was obvious: how do we get rid of the grease?"
"I think our problems with grease and oil-laden kitchen waste water were typical of those found in most hospitals today," Walsh said. "We had been depending on a relatively small, 40-year old cast-iron trap. It was totally inadequate and its capacity had not kept pace with the hospital's growth. Maintenance of the trap was a miserable job, too. Frequently someone had to enter the trap and scrape off the the grease accumulation to keep it functional."
Despite intensive maintenance efforts, the hospital also was experiencing occasional sewer line back-ups forcing the kitchen to shut down. "We simply could not tolerate such threatening conditions," Walsh said. "So as an additional remedy, we resorted to an annual pressure blasting of the drainage line between the hopital and the street. But it was obvious that our problems with our kitchen water were getting worse. The warning from our city water and sewer department was simply the last straw."
Consultant Roger Bernard, a plumbing and fire protection engineer with the Richie Organization, Newton, Mass., recommended Walsh visit Brown University in Providence R.I., to see its system for automatically removing grease and oil from food service waste water.
"We were impressed with the system's compact, stainless steel design and the efficiency and ease of maintenance," Walsh said, noting that the university staff enthusiastically endorsed the system.
A similar system subsequently installed in the hospital now removes as much as two 55-gallon drums of grease and oils a month from the kitchen flow and has eliminated drain line cloggage. "Most important," Walsh notes, "the hospital is now in full compliance with local sewer use requirements and we are once again on good terms with our community and the Brockton Water and Sewer Department."