Tagged with 'grease'

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 ... 

Among the many pandemic-driven culinary trends over the past two years is a reminder that rotisserie chicken remains a popular comfort food. Many grocery store chains enjoyed strong and steady rotisserie chicken sales amid the ups and downs of the past 24 months, as have a number of restaurants that serve it. Investing in a rotisserie oven can be good for business, but beware. They dump a lot of grease into your plumbing system. Here’s how to prepare for it. 

What is your plan when a city official, contractor, or engineer says a 1,000-gallon grease interceptor must be installed in your drive-through, parking lot, or another area where vehicles will be driving over it every day? 

Trying to comply with local codes and regulations shouldn’t be difficult. You shouldn’t have to use all your resources to engineer, install, and maintain a grease trap. It should be easier and more affordable. 

Commercial kitchen operators already know the benefits of using grease interceptors to capture used oil and grease -- cleaner sewage systems, reduced costs for wastewater treatment plants and fewer fines from municipalities.

Plus, you can protect your facility's interior plumbing and make a little extra money selling used cooking oil to recyclers.

But did you know that by capturing all that grease you're also helping cut greenhouse gas emissions?

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?

It happens every year during the holidays: Home cooks rev up their ovens and deep fryers and in go millions of turkeys in preparation for Thanksgiving day feasts.

The following day, and sometimes even the same day, plumbers and sewer district workers get called out to deal with blockages, back-ups and overflows. It’s messy and expensive. And it’s all completely unnecessary. 

But, as someone who works in wastewater treatment, you knew that. 

The question is, how do you eliminate, or least reduce the impact of, the annual Thanksgiving grease-apocalypse. The goal, obviously, is to convince as many people as possible about the dangers of dumping turkey grease down the drain.

Fats, oils and grease (FOG) in wastewater are one of the biggest challenges facing wastewater systems around the world. Grease, sometimes along with solids, can build up into a solid mass that can narrow or even block wastewater pipes. When that happens, sewers overflow, pipes break, and local authorities are forced to clean up the mess and make repairs.

In the United States alone, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as many as 47 percent of all wastewater system blockages are caused by the buildup of grease. In New York City alone, those annual repairs cost nearly $5 million. Other large cities also rack up multi-million dollar bills for repairs and emergency service.

Cities are adopting a number of tactics to keep grease out of their wastewater systems.

A commercial kitchen wouldn’t repeatedly send 200 gallons of burning water and 20 pounds of hot lard through its grease interceptor even on the busiest night. And a blizzard would make it even less likely. 

But this past February, that’s what we subjected our newest grease interceptor, the Trapzilla TZ-1826, to — during a storm.

The TZ-1826 is the third-generation Trapzilla, with a tank design optimized to retain more grease in as small a footprint as possible. We tested the TZ-1826 to the ASME standard to determine its efficiency and capacity.

We didn’t expect what happened next.

To understand the new TZ-1826 Trapzilla Grease Interceptor, consider two numbers: 1,826 and 11,000. 

The first is how many pounds of grease the TZ-1826 can hold. The second is how much a 1,000-gallon concrete trap weighs — a concrete trap that would hold a similar amount of grease, but would require heavy machinery to install and take up three times as much space as the TZ-1826.

How is that possible? That’s what happens when you apply a quarter century of grease interceptor innovation and oil-water separation expertise to a problem that a growing number of commercial food service establishments face: Lots of grease, but not much space for a high-capacity grease trap.

Business managers might feel as if their lives revolve around quarters … quarters of the year, that is. From taxes to financial reports and marketing initiatives, managers have a laundry list of tasks to accomplish four times a year. Food service establishment operators have yet one more responsibility to tackle at least once a quarter — the pumping of the grease trap.

Granted, most restaurant and commercial kitchens contract out this dreaded deed, but the manager still must choose a trusted contractor. Working with someone that cuts corners or is frequently tardy could land FSE operators in hot water with their municipalities.

 Because the middle layer of water is what exits the tank, installing a properly sized interceptor — and regular maintenance to ensure the grease and water levels are at appropriate levels — are of utmost importance. Also important, hiriing the right contractor to clean out the grease interceptor periodically. Here are some tips.