THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601200098
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: TECH TRACK
GADGETS AND GIZMOS FOR THE NEXT CENTURY
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
IT'S TAKEN Jeff White three decades, but he's finally perfected Snowfluent, a way of cleaning sewage by freezing it. White, the 58-year-old president of Delta Engineering in Ottawa, has patented a treatment process that makes use of Delta's snow-making machinery.
In the Snowfluent process, once wastewater droplets hit cold air, they freeze completely and fall to the ground as minuscule ice pellets that look superficially like snow. The process kills harmful bacteria and microorganisms by rupturing cell walls.
According to Delta's estimates, Snowfluent could reduce treatment plant construction costs by 70 percent and cut operational expenses in half. Plants could be made much smaller, and costly chemical treatments should be cut to a minimum, because most of the cleaning occurs during freezing.
White asserts that the savings eventually could be passed directly to consumers in the form of lower utility bills.
Is Snowfluent suited to Hampton Roads? Maybe, White says. He certainly wouldn't mind visiting to sell the idea. White has fond memories of Norfolk from several visits during his naval career.
White says he was a twentysomething sublieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy when, one night at a friend's house in Vancouver while learning ``how to use Scotch,'' he left a cube-filled, otherwise-empty glass on a fireplace mantel.
By morning, a brown residue had formed on the glass's bottom, covered by a layer of water.
What happened to White's glass 30 years ago was a phenomenon familiar to natives of the Arctic Circle: when you freeze water completely, any dissolved material - salts, say, or pollutants - will be forced out of solution, into the spaces between water molecules.
As the ice melts, those insolubles simply sink to the bottom of whatever container they're in. Any gaseous byproducts evaporate harmlessly into the air and other substances - nitrogen and phosphorous, for instance - percolate slowly into soil, fertilizing it.
Snowfluent equipment is being installed at ski resorts in the United States and Canada. With a little rework, White contends that the process could work south of the Snow Belt, although he concedes that additional, possibly costly, refrigeration equipment would be needed. MEMO: "Tech Track'' will appear every Monday in the Daily Break. Readers with
ideas for future columns are invited to contact staff science and
technology writer James Schultz at (804) 446-2599, or via e-mail at
schultz infi.net
ILLUSTRATION: DELTA ENGINEERING
The Snowfluent process sprays wastewater droplets into freezing cold
air, which kills harmful bacteria.
by CNB