E093: Lean and Green Project to Reduce Wastewater in State of Washington

In today’s episode, I share a presentation from the IISE Seattle conference on May 23, 2022.Joshua Fowler from Romac Industries starts off the presentation by giving some background on the project that I was involved with as the lean consultant, and Michael Johnson from Lean Environment Inc. discusses the technical solutions applied to reduce wastewater by 50% in 2021. Historically, draining the entire spent process and rinse tanks generated hazardous waste (spent acid containing ammonia, fluorine, chromium, and nickel) and wastewater. They extended the passivation tank life, reducing and ultimately eliminating the need to drain the entire baths. They implemented counter-current flow to bring acid solutions back to the process tank and keep rinse tank acid concentrations low. They then installed an ion exchange system to allow consistent water quality throughout the process. Finally, acid distillation is planned for recovery and reuse of nitric acid and automated the rack transfers.As a result of the project, Romac cut spent acid waste and toxic wastewaters from 64,000 to 30,000 pounds, saving about $50,000 per year, and saw substantial improvements in product quality and process control. Looking into the future, the new process will provide an over 90% reduction in hazardous acid waste and toxic wastewaters, a 200% increase in line capacity, $100,000 per year in savings, and significantly improve the safety and ease of work procedures for operators, as well as a reduction in energy use.The also received a Pollution Prevention (P2) Multimedia Award in 2021.You can also watch the video of this presentation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIG_RtrcZ4I Links* Michael Johnson* Joshua Fowler * State of Washington Department of Ecology* Impact Washington* Lean and Green Program 2022* Institute of