THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 5, 1994 TAG: 9409030508
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANNE-MARIE SULLIVAN, SPECIAL TO BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 126 lines
Virginia Beach entrepreneur Michael C. Campbell, head of Katec Inc., fielded an unusual call last year. A Vermont state official asked him a single question. Could he perform an environmental miracle?
Campbell returned to the shop. He doodled and dreamed for months. What happened next illustrates the fine art of turning ideas into sales.
He invented a gadget called Prosolv. It'll reach market this fall, a possible answer to a problem that bedevils Vermont and hazardous-waste landfills throughout the world.
Campers, households and businesses discard thousands of used propane, butane and propylene cylinders every month. Rather than spend $300 to recycle each cylinder, users toss the cans away, although traces of gas trapped inside threaten to explode if heated, spewing fire and shrapnel. One Vermont landfill has considered banning the fuel canisters.
Campbell's invention, a $649 device shaped like a megaphone, is intended to fit over discarded cylinders and let the gas trapped inside escape into the air.
If it works as intended, Prosolv could encourage the recycling of fuel cylinders, ease the burden on landfills and, not incidentally, put tiny Katec on the map.
``The only way I know of to purge propane canisters for recycling is Katec's Prosolv. Right now there isn't anything,'' said Chuck Nettleship of the Steel Recycling Institute.
My first thought was, `It's not big enough to fool with,' '' Campbell said, remembering what went through his mind after the phone conversation with the Vermont official.
Campbell presumed the market was too small to justify the cost of inventing, designing and manufacturing a solution for Vermont. Then he talked to his customers. They gave him an earful.
Katec employs only three people full time in Virginia Beach, but Campbell years earlier had sold machine tooling to Texas oil refineries and petrochemical plants. His old contacts were part of the customer base for products distributed by Katec.
From them he learned the disposal problem. Used gas cylinders were being hidden and buried, and even wrapped in brown paper bags and dumped in the trash. It was the same problem Vermont had identified.
Vermont officials were overwhelmed by calls from people wanting to know how to safely dispose of propane cylinders, said Barbara Winters, a spokeswoman at the state's Department of Household Hazardous Waste.
A $5 can of butane is more expensive to recycle than buy. The residual fuels trapped inside discourages recycling. Cleaning out the spent containers can cost $12 for small cans and $400 for larger ones. The cans almost have to be thrown away.
Even partially full, a propane cylinder can be extremely hazardous to the people and equipment in the waste and recycling industries. Fumes, fires and explosions are ever-present hazards.
``It would be nice to be able to recycle propane cylinders,'' said John Duke, of Southeastern Public Service Authority, the regional waste disposal agency in South Hampton Roads.
``A lot of steel is being wasted,'' Duke said. ``At the moment they are disposed of in an isolated area. One full cylinder could give us a lot of problems. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to touch these things for recycling without a phenomenal amount of money - up to $300 a cylinder.''
Virginia requires industrial users of propane to legally dispose of fuel canisters through contractors. The empty propane, propylene, mapp and calibration gas cylinders are considered solid hazardous waste. Households can legally put butane, propane and other fuel cylinders in the trash.
The dumping sends about 35 million pounds of steel annually into landfills. Scrap metal companies have ignored the cans because of the explosion threat.
``The ability to recycle propane canisters could significantly reduce our costs,'' said J.J. Hoyt, manager of the Resource Recovery and Recycling Program at Norfolk Naval Base. ``We are required by Virginia state regulations to empty propane canisters because we use them for industrial activity.''
Realizing a market existed, Campbell went to work. He had already produced Aerosolv. It emptied the gas from used aerosol cans containing items such as paint and hair spray.
Indeed, Campbell had attended a recycling convention sponsored last October by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. There he met the Vermont officials who wondered if he could do with the propane cylinders what he did for aerosol cans.
Using the Aerosolv sales as a cushion, Campbell worked at developing a solution for the larger canisters. His device fits snugly into a fuel canister, gauges the amount of residual gas and safely purges the fuel. Once the gas is released, the valve stem can be removed. Then the canister is marked by a steel recycling tag that tells people the can is safe.
``In eight seconds,'' he said, ``Prosolv creates perfectly clean, highly recyclable steel containers. The key to its success is simplicity. We wanted something simple and self-explanatory. Before there was no simple way to dispose of propane cylinders. Now there is.''
Coming up with a special product wasn't novel. Campbell had once been a salesman in Texas with NCH Corp. of Dallas. He liked solving problems for customers. When Du Pont's pump shafts kept breaking, Campbell said he helped develop a titanium alloy rod.
``We're all inventors,'' he said. ``It's a natural human tendency.''
Campbell relocated to Virginia Beach when his wife, Katherine, had the opportunity to buy her girlhood home near First Colonial High School. Campbell, 43, is a Corpus Christi native with a marketing degree from the University of Texas.
With a customer base as diverse as Exxon, Lockheed and Du Pont, Katec now has 326 sales representatives around the globe. Campbell may hire a few more marketing employees in Hampton Roads once Prosolv production begins in force, but the manufacturing will be done elsewhere.
Subcontractors make the parts for Prosolv in Ohio, Texas and Indiana, and the assembly takes place in Buffalo, N.Y.
Campbell figures Prosolv is a step toward another product. Just as Aerosolv sales paid for the development of Prosolv, Campbell said, Prosolv will cushion the invention of yet another product.
``We have found our niche to be in this environmental market,'' Campbell said. ILLUSTRATION: [Color photo]
MOTOYA NAKAMURA
Virginia Beach businessman Michael C. Campbell, head of Katec Inc.,
invented a gadget called Prosolv to remove gas from used propane
cylinders. The $649 device is meant to encourage recycling and help
stem the tide of discarded cylinders that poses a problem to
hazardous-waste landfills worldwide.
by CNB