Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302210130
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: IRISBURG LENGTH: Long
INVENTIVE PARTNERS HAVE HOT IDEA ON WASTE DISPOSAL
HENRY COUNTY has a problem with sewage sludge. America has a problem with used tires. Two Henry County men have an idea. If it works, they're heroes; if it fails, they've wasted a lot of money and time.
Jimmy Branscome and Jack Larson already have tested their rotary kiln tire incinerator, but it wasn't exactly a valid experiment.
They set up the contraption on Branscome's farm in Carroll County and started burning tires.
After half a dozen test runs, the Virginia Department of Air Pollution Control, which frowns upon such crude experiments, issued the novice inventors a violation notice.
"We were a little ignorant of the law," Branscome said of the June 1991 tests. "We didn't know we needed a permit to build it, let alone experiment."
Next month, Branscome and Larson will have a much more important - and much more closely monitored - test of their concept.
At the Henry County Public Service Authority's waste-water treatment plant on the Lower Smith River, observers will get the first hint of whether old tires can be used as fuel to dry sewage sludge.
Throughout the country, there are some companies that burn chipped tires just to reduce the space they take in landfills. In Florida, an inventor burns tires at just the right heat to be able to recover oil.
And many localities dry sludge to reduce the space it takes in landfills. Sludge is a byproduct of treated waste water. Its volume can be nearly eliminated when its water content is evaporated.
But no one yet has figured a way to use the petroleum stored in tires as heat to dry sludge.
Larson and Branscome think they can do it. And Henry County officials hope they are right.
Each year, the county produces 10,650 tons of sludge. Public Service Authority spokesman Bill Farrar said that figure is projected to grow by 375 tons each year.
The authority has been taking its sludge to the county landfill at no cost. But the landfill will have to close in May.
Other sludge-disposal alternatives - composting it or hauling it to another county's landfill - would cost the authority and its customers anywhere from $160,000 to $1 million yearly.
By charging a tire disposal fee and collecting money from zinc that could be recovered from the incinerated tires, the authority estimates it could show a profit of about $83,000 each year if the Branscome-Larson idea works.
The authority has contributed $25,000 toward construction of the prototype for the test. Executive Director Sid Clower questioned whether the sophisticated sludge dryer will pass air pollution standards or even succeed in drying sludge.
But the authority, he said, is obligated to its customers to give the innovation a try because it could keep sewer rates down in the long run. And, Clower said, if the device doesn't work the authority would get its money back.
"If you're asking me if we're in a dire situation, the answer is `yes,' " Clower said. "We've got a 50-ton-a-day sludge problem."
Branscome, 50, knows plenty about the problems Virginia and the rest of the country has in getting rid of scrap tires.
He is a Collinsville Honda dealer who also owns tire stores in Ridgeway and Hillsville. Branscome's stores retread more than 70,000 tires a year.
In 1989, Branscome ran afoul of the Virginia Department of Waste Management and the attorney general's office for illegally disposing of tires.
He points out, however, that he had been paying a man to haul away his scrap tires and that he paid $27,000 to cover the tire pile according to state specifications.
Three years ago, shortly after his run-in with the state, Branscome came up with the idea for a rotary kiln tire incinerator.
He enlisted Larson, 59, who worked much of his life developing environmental controls for boats. "I'm just sort of a technical nut," Larson said.
The two men formed Atlantic-Pacific Engineering, got help from Virginia Tech environmental engineer J. Martin Hughes, and developed the tire-burning sludge dryer.
Just building the prototype for this spring's test is costing about $100,000.
"Anybody that's either tried or done anything with scrap tires is either broke or in Chapter 11," Branscome said.
Virginia produces 6 million scrap tires a year, and the United States produces more than 200 million yearly. Larson and Branscome know that if their invention works, their patent will be sought by municipalities across the country. But for now, they're not looking beyond Henry County.
"We're trying to stay with simplicity and stay small," Larson said. "We're trying to develop a device that will take care of a local area, not half the country."
The concept behind the invention is fairly basic. Tires, which individually will take about 30 seconds to burn, will bring the temperature in the furnace to 2,400 degrees.
By spraying a fine mist of sludge onto the gases heated by the burned tires, the temperature of the gases will be regulated and reduced to about 350 degrees.
Because sludge is 97 percent water, the bulk of it will be evaporated. Burning the tires will keep a second product out of the landfill.
Familiar with the thick, black smoke that churns out of tire fires, some Henry County residents fear the incinerator may be an air-pollution risk.
A group of Henry County residents even attended last week's Franklin County supervisors meeting to hear a proposal to spread sludge on farmland to use it as fertilizer.
Air Pollution Control workers and an independent environmental company will test emissions during the test next month. If the prototype sludge dryer works, it would cost $1.5 million to build a permanent incinerator.
Hughes, who has conducted experimental tire burns in Virginia Tech's incinerator, is convinced the prototype's emissions should be no worse than emissions from plants that burn coal.
"Out in the open when you have a tire fire and you have all that black smoke - that's good fuel that didn't get burned," Hughes said. "The way we're doing it in an enclosure, we're getting all of the fuel out of the tires."
John Petchul, environmental manager of the Air Pollution Control Department's Lynchburg office, said Atlantic-Pacific's "fancy sludge dryer" will undergo three test burns.
The sludge dryer's innovators are in the "college experiment stage," Petchul said. Even if the experiment with the prototype works, it would take Atlantic-Pacific at least six months to get a permit from the air board to build a permanent device.
"Somebody could make a lot of money and get a lot of praise and acclaim," Petchul said. "But they've got to put this big thing together and make it work.
"They're inventing something, that's what they're doing. It's a big task."