Snow Removal Wastewater Disposal Alternatives (SJN: 134629)
Researchers: William Schneider, Christopher Miller – University of Akron
ODOT currently owns and operates 88 county garages, 127 outposts, and 12 district garage and central office facilities. Additionally, ODOT owns and operates a fleet of 1674 dump trucks utilized, primarily, to combat snow and ice on 49,000 lane miles of interstate and state highways. When cleaning the fleet vehicles after the snow and ice removal process, industrial wastewater is created and must be disposed of in an eco-friendly manner. Currently, wastewater generated from washing the equipment is disposed of in one of two methods:
(1) If the garage or facility is in an area that sanitary sewer is available, the wastewater is drained into the existing sewer system. Based on the data from the District 10 county garage, the cost is approximately $3500/year.
(2) If sewer is not available, the wastewater is filtered to remove oil then stored in tanks to be re-used to make salt brine. Based on the data from District 10 county garage, the cost is approximately $28,690/year.
Storing wastewater to re-use in making salt brine is preferred as it is cost effective and environmentally friendly; however, the quantity of wastewater generated currently exceeds the amount of salt brine needed. As a result, the excess wastewater must be transported to a sanitary treatment facility in those regions of the state where sanitary sewer is not available.
The objective of this research is to provide an evaluation of the existing process that is utilized when sanitary sewer is not available and recommend a solution that will (a) alleviate the creation of industrial wastewater in the equipment cleaning process entirely or (b) provide a more cost effective solution to safely, efficiently, and environmentally dispose of wastewater generated from the process.