Tagged with 'trapzilla'

The Curious Case of the Smelly Blob

I’m not fond of unsolved mysteries. When a service contractor stumped us with a problem in the late 1990s, the issue nagged at me.

The contractor told us about gelatinous masses building up in a handful of grease separators. The masses smelled terrible, he said, and the separators had surprisingly low water input flows.

We tried figuring out what the gel was. We ran tests in our lab. We looked online. We consulted wastewater treatment professionals and scientists. We couldn’t come up with anything.

Whenever I thought about the gel, I kept picturing the monster from the 1958 cinematic classic, The Blob.

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New drawings place Trapzilla in vehicle traffic areas

Delivery truckWhat 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. 

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Increases in Eating Out Put More Pressure on Pretreatment

Sandwich and friesChanging demographics and lifestyles are producing greater strains on water treatment systems and could threaten water quality. Surprised? It’s true. And we’re not just talking about the strain of a growing population.
 
Since the 1970s, the amount of food consumed at restaurants or purchased from take-out spots has increased dramatically. And with that, comes more commercial kitchen wastewater entering the sewers.
 
2006 USDA study, for example, found that from the 1970s to the 1990s, the percent of daily calories from meals purchased away from home increased from 18 percent to 32 percent. And from 1974 to 2004, away-from-home spending grew from 34 percent of total food dollars to about half of all food expenditures.
 

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Trapzilla, A Thermaco Technology, making a difference in worldwide effort to deliver clean water

Mexico CityASHEBORO, N.C. — Water runs from our taps, and we store it in bottles, coolers and refrigerators.
 
Clean, cool and crisp. We take it for granted.
 
Much of the world isn’t so fortunate.
 
While the world population has tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold according to water.org, which works to promote clean water sources throughout the world.
 
Thermaco, a leader in the highly specialized field of oil and grease extraction from wastewater, considers this to be an important part of its mission.
 
“Thermaco strives to make relevant products for water pretreatment that enable food service providers to be better stewards of the sewer collection systems of which they are a part,” says Yaralitza A. Erives, Director of Customer Service and Sales at Thermaco.

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Alpha Biofuels - Offering a Clean Solution to Growth in Singapore

Alpha BioFuelsSingapore –- the East Asian city-state –- is known worldwide as a leader in urban cleanliness and environmental stewardship. Visitors to Singapore discover a bustling multicultural metropolis where towering skyscrapers soar above charming British colonial architectural, and where an abundance of tourist sites, glamorous shopping centers, and food courts buzz with activity seven days a week. As one of the world’s most densely populated metropolitan areas, both the government and citizens of Singapore are proud of the nation’s leadership in urban efficiency, quality of life, and environmentalism.

 

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Suggestions for Reducing Detergent/Lipid Emulsions:

Commercial Kitchen DishwasherKeep Soapy flows from Contacting Downstream Fats and Oils (Lipids)

A commercial dishwasher’s output is hot, soapy water and is ALWAYS running richer than needed in terms of detergent chemicals. Why?  Because it is a far lesser evil to send unused detergent (high in BOD) with sanitizers (chlorides) and water softening agents (a variety of mineral grabbing stuff so as to leave no spots on the washed ware) THAN to have a potential sanitary hazard imposed on the community’s dining customers, i.e. dirty dishes.  Sending a commercial dishwasher’s output through the kitchen’s drainage plumbing emulsifies any and all fats or oils in its route, including the retained grease and oils in a conventional downstream grease separator.  Notice the wording “conventional”.  Anytime a warm (usually no longer hot by that time) soapy flow enters a conventional (think traditional inlet and outlet configuration), it rises “lava lamp” style and displaces the cold water already in the separator.  As the cold water layer falls, it tugs on the underside of the trapped grease mat, adding some gentle mixing action.

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What’s Your Flatulence Suffering Preference?

Pumping out TrapzillaA Long Poot or a Short Toot?

The smell was putrid, foreign, the caller said.

The strange odor, which emanated from somewhere on the college campus, stung the nostrils of the untrained and the unsuspecting.

But mostly the smell, characteristic of rotten eggs, was making people afraid.
What is it? What can it be?

The students wrongly assumed the awful smells were from hazardous chemicals. Someone called in a Hazmat team, and buildings were evacuated.

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Food Equipment & Supplies Features

Trapzilla FightFood Equipment and Supplies Magazine recently sent out an E-Newsletter featuring the Trapzilla line of products.  Take a moment to check out the articles below and stop by the Trapzilla website to see the award-winning animated short-film.

Foodservice operators have more options than ever when buying and installing grease interceptors, but that wasn’t always the case. The choices were few and certainly not optimal — either deal with the maintenance issues  involving a smaller, internal unit or find the space and invest in a large exterior concrete tank. A necessary inconvenience, some operators thought.

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Trapzilla Saves the Day for a Historic Town in North Carolina

Arnold AllredWith more than 37 years of experience in municipal wastewater treatment, Arnold Allred knows about the problems that restaurant oil and grease can cause for wastewater collection systems and treatment plants. 

Allred began his career in wastewater management in 1974, when right out of high school he landed a job “turning valves” with the City of Asheboro’s wastewater plant.  He stayed with the treatment facility for 30 years, working his way to plant superintendent.  After retiring from the City of Asheboro, Allred began serving as Public Works...  

  

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Thermaco joins Southeastern United States - Canadian Provinces (SEUS-CP) Alliance Conference

SEUS-CP Alliance ConferenceHeld on May 20-22 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the 2012 SEUS-CP Alliance Conference brought together 300 high-level governmental and business leaders  -- all sharing the common goal of enhancing strategic trade and investment between the United States and Canada. 

Focusing on advanced manufacturing, technology, and a green economy, SEUS provided Thermaco representatives an opportunity to meet with Canadian government officials from Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Manitoba, and Quebec to share ideas about regulating FOG (fat, oil and grease) produced by Canadian restaurants.  
 

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