Tagged with 'interceptor'

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?

If you read our post on how emulsions can lead to fats, oil and grease (FOG) escaping a grease interceptor, you know that some grease will inevitably get into the wastewater system.

While the amount of grease getting through each day doesn’t seem that large, it constitutes what many feel is the greatest threat to the world’s sewer systems. 

You might wonder why it would be a problem if the fats and oils have been emulsified — broken into tiny particles — through physical emulsion or, via soaps and detergents, chemical emulsion. And what that has to do with grease interceptor design.

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.

Think about the grease interceptor in your food service establishment.

You’ve seen it labor on through long days, lunch rushes followed by full-house dinners — the silent workhorse of the kitchen that helps keep your commercial kitchen environmentally friendly.

But, did you know that the design of your grease trap could have potentially devastating effects on the health of your kitchen staff?

When not properly designed and maintained, grease traps can become a breeding ground for bacteria that release hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), a pungent and sometimes deadly gas. This gas can cause health problems, which is bad enough. In addition, though, the gas can damage some grease interceptors, reducing their lifespans and creating potentially higher costs.

Fortunately, this isn't inevitable. Learn more about the dangers of hydrogen sulfide and how that should figure into your grease intereceptor decisions. 

It’s not very often that wastewater system workers are hailed as heroes in the headlines around the world. But in August 2013, that’s what happened.

News media around the world picked up the story of London’s ‘fatberg,’ a bus-sized, 33,000-pound mass of fats, oils and grease that had clogged an 8-foot diameter sewer line.

The English newspaper The Guardian reported:

“A sewage worker has become an unlikely hero after taking three weeks to defeat a toxic 15-tonne ball of congealed fat the size of a bus that came close to turning parts of the London borough of Kingston upon Thames into a cesspit.”

If you own a restaurant or other business within the foodservice industry, chances are good you’re already using some sort of grease interceptor. If not, sooner or later you’ll likely face clogged pipes, back-ups into your kitchen and costly fines.

In the United States, there are three types of grease interceptors generally found within the foodservice industry: small passive hydromechanical grease interceptors (sometimes referred to as grease traps), larger grease interceptors made out of plastic, fiberglass, steel or concrete, and automatic grease removal devices. Though using any of these options is better than nothing, all grease traps are not created equally and, as technology improves, so do grease interceptors.

You always score a solid "A" during health department inspections.

You make sure your fire extinguishers and other safety gear is regularly inspected.

And if something goes wrong with a piece of equipment, you immediately call a service technician and get it fixed.

While you may think you’re doing everything you could, and everything you should, to keep your commercial kitchen in compliance with government regulations, there are still a few surprises that could trip you up.