WASTEWATER TREATMENT ON JAIL ROAD

Every Wastewater Treatment Plant is unique.  Standardisation is virtually impossible ( Water Treatment Companies Pls. note).  I have designed treatment plants for a cigarette manufacturer across various units in India.  Though the raw material, the production process and the product are the same across all factories, at each location, the Treatment plant is unique.  Environmental factors,  historical and cultural practices have a large part to play in differentiating wastewater characteristics.  Outside each Department of the factory in Munger, Bihar  there is a spittoon with a water curtain contraption with a perennial flow of water : the Paan chewing culture of this region has been cleverly accommodated thanks to the abundant supply of water from the Ganges, while saving the factory floors and walls from unsightly blobs of red graffiti.

Here is another example of a unique dual use Treatment plant on Jail Road, Madurai. 

WASTEWATER TREATMENT ON THE JAIL ROAD

My report on the working of the WasteWater Treatment Plant at the threads making factory of Madura Coats, Koratti, ( chasing the Island Express)  was accepted by the Head office : I am happy to state that a majority of my recommendations were also implemented with satisfactory results, much to the dismay of the old bandicoots in the factory.

I was next tasked with “Upgrading” the WWTP at their Madurai factory on Jail Road, their first manufacturing unit in India.  This factory had a long history : It was commissioned in the year 1889.  A huge A0 Size ( 33 inch x 47 inch ) Ammonia print drawing was sent to me to study the existing treatment plant and facilities. The large size of the drawing was evidently necessitated by the enormous extent of the plant, the innumerable tanks and equipments and other paraphernalia., including a designated Office Block.

I was at my wits end to decipher where the Treatment plant began and where it ended, and all the convoluted  interconnections and linkages betwixt and between. : such was the profusion and haphazard placement of the various units in the treatment plant.  Truly this plant was a Riddle wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma.

I had to crack this puzzle.  Clearly, the very first treatment plant was put up not much later than when the factory itself was commissioned over a century ago.  In later years, with every expansion of the factory, the Treatment plant was also upgraded.  A more extensive ( intensive ?  – English is a funny language) scrutiny of the drawing purely out of academic interest, revealed that there had been at least eight such mindless expansions/ additions to the treatment plant which had ultimately spawned this grotesque brontosaurus staring at me out of the A0 size drawing.  A detailed census now was certainly in order. The count was :

-          Forty odd small, medium, large tanks of all shapes and sizes

-          Sixty two pumps of various descriptions ( I am not exaggerating here )

-          Several agitators and mixers in tanks at random

-          Miles and miles of pipelines

-          Miles and miles of cable and cable trays above ground, in the air, from pole to pole

-          Several wide roads, intermediate pathways and mule tracks

Since it was humanly impossible to monitor the various units, water levels in tanks, overflow, spillages etc., CCTV cameras were installed at strategic locations to monitor the operations and avoid such emergencies.

An independent enterprise within Madura Coats ran the treatment facilities with its own separate Admin., Purchase, Accounts, Engineering and HR Depts.

My report to the Head office was short. I recommended carpet bombing of the entire facility, and to build a totally new treatment plant with just 6 tanks, 6 pumps and to be run by four operating personnel.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                      June 09, 2011

Footnote

Alas, my recommendation was not accepted by Madura Coats.  An old hand in the Company and a good friend, “Pops” by name undeceived me.  When the Jailhouse next door was full to overflowing, the authorities sought temporary accommodation for the inmates in the Treatment plant.  The jailbirds would be left blindfolded in the middle of the maze : Slipping, sliding, tripping, going round and round in circles it would be days before these poor souls found their way out, and by that time the jailhouse would be ready to receive them back.  Truly, a multifaceted Treatment Plant no Environmental Engineer/ Consultant can even dream of designing – and yes, including the security cameras.

A COLD CHRISTMAS IN MUNGER

A FULL MOON OVER JHANJHA :  A COLD CHRISTMAS IN MUNGER

After successfully completing and commissioning  the Wastewater Treatment Plant for XYZ Ltd. in their cigarette factory situated in the heart of the city of Bangalore, I was called to make a study for a similar treatment plant at their factory in Munger ( Monghyr)  Bihar – estd. 1908  The Bangalore factory at that time employed nearly 2000 people on campus : the WWTP was located right across the road from the workers’ canteen.  A bold decision indeed by the Branch Engineer at that time (circa 1988 ) - Ganesh D.  The plant has been running for over 20 years now, with nary a complaint.

The Company had made necessary arrangements for my travel to Munger, or at least that was the assurance given to me.  Off I flew to Calcutta on the 23^rd of December 1993, on the only flight of Indian Airlines, reaching Dum Dum aerodrome late at night around 10 PM, due to a delayed departure.  I got out of the terminal building looking for the placard of XYZ Limited.  There was nobody waiting to receive me at the airport.  I waited for sometime, and when no succour was forthcoming, I looked up the Telephone Directory, and started calling all the Guest Houses of XYZ Ltd., listed in the book : No Transit House had a reservation for Dr. A.S Kodavasal.  It was now well past 11.30 PM : taxis and all other forms of public transport had vamoosed.  I spent an uncomfortable night at the airport.

Early next morning, having got hold of the addresses of the Guest Houses from the Telephone Directory, I headed out to town. All the rooms in all the Guest Houses were spoken for, the day being Christmas Eve : Christmas in Calcutta is a great, grand gala affair.  A Kindly visiting engineer of XYZ Ltd., graciously offered to share his quarters in the Guest House in Middleton Row with me.  As the first order of business for the day, I hastened to Howrah station to book myself a ticket to KIUL junction, which Ganesh at the Bangalore factory had mentioned in passing as the railhead for their Munger unit.  I got myself a ticket on the Danapur Express leaving Howrah that night to Kiul.

My next concern was to convey my travel plans to their Munger unit, so as to arrange transport from Kiul to Munger : The train was scheduled to reach Kiul at the ungodly hour of  3:30 AM !  The same kindly soul in the Guest House advised me that the Company’s Chief Engineer resided just down that very lane, and I might want to use his good offices to bail me out of this horrendous snafu.  I had briefly met Subhash Rastogi ( The Chief)  at the Bangalore factory when the treatment plant was being executed.  He lived in a typical Calcutta style apartment building – Aged and dilapidated looking from the outside, but supremely elegant quarters of enormous proportions from the inside.  Amused as he was by my tales of woe, he immediately called up the Branch Manager at Munger and conveyed to him my plight, my travel plans and my need for transport from Kiul ere the crack of dawn the next day.  I thanked the good Chief and retired to the Guest House to a well earned rest for the remainder of the day.

As a brilliant full moon cast its silver glow over the earth, the train raced past quaint old stations -  Jamui, Jasidih, Jhanjah, and finally pulled into Kiul on a cold Christmas morning.  After some initial dithering, I finally found the way out of the station via a dimly lit tunnel underneath the sprawling marshalling yards above.  I heaved a sigh of relief when I found a lone Maruti van with the XYZ placard waiting for me : three poor souls wrapped up in thick woolen blankets,  were sitting haunched beside the vehicle, fighting off the bitter cold, around a makeshift bonfire.  They got up with alacrity, put my luggage in the boot, bade me sit in the van - the driver at the wheel and the two other copassengers on either side of me.

I reached Basdeopur Park, the residential enclave of the factory, lined with trees beyond which stood old colonial style bungalows, each one majestic, on its own large plot of well tended lawns and shrubbery, just as the birds started calling in unison, welcoming a new dawn.

I took my time reporting at the factory in the morning, to wash away the weariness of the night before.  Rounds of the factory done, we assembled in the Branch Engineer’s office to take stock of the requirement of a wastewater treatment plant.

During the rounds, I had chanced upon a Trickling Filter ( a kind of wastewater treatment unit) evidently in long disuse,  constructed may be 50 years before, engineered to perfection, and still standing, home now to spiders and other denizens of the deep and the dark. The piping in the plant was of first grade Cast Iron, showing no sign of ageng or rusting.  The fill media in the filter was of uniform sized pebbles, in sound condition, sourced from the banks of the Ganges flowing nearby.  Truly, this factory had history : In the early days, tobacco was shipped to the factory in barges, sailing up the Ganges from Calcutta.

I did not have the heart to condemn this rare gem of a treatment plant and play a wanton part in its destruction and demolition.  I pleaded with the engineers to let me revive that marvel of engineering to showcase to the world that sound Technology has no “Use by Date”.  A few years earlier I had seen similar trickling filter plants, with self propelled rotary distributors working like a charm for the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, supplied by Dorr-Oliver, in the 1950’s.

Alas, the engineers at XYZ Ltd. gave my proposal a big negatory.  They wanted modern Technology to be implemented in the treatment plant.  This begs the question : For what purpose Modern Technology, when the old will do the job with greater élan ?  Technology ought to be graded on parameters of performance, not on its vintage.

That Christmas evening ended on a good note with drinks all around at the bar of the Peninsular Club of Basdeopur park.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                          July 07, 2011

Footnote :

The same three musketeers in woolen shawls dropped me back at Kiul for the night train back to Calcutta.  It was only on my third trip to Munger, did I realize that the two copassengers on either side of me were my personal body guards, with sawn off shotguns under their shawls for my protection in the badlands of Bihar.  Munger boasts a long tradition of gun making, which to this day remains a flourishing cottage industry.

SCRUBBER FOR A BOMB FACTORY

SCRUBBER FOR A BOMB FACTORY

Blue Star Ltd. yes, of Air conditioners fame, of all blessed companies bagged a technically complex project of designing, fabricating, installing and commissioning a scrubber unit to neutralize Hydrofluoric acid ( HF) gas.  The Client ? The Bomb Factory of The Indian Rare Earths Limited, under the Dept,.of Atomic Energy( DAE) Govt. of India.  Quite a scary customer ?

The only connection I could see that Blue Star had with water, wastewater, or any sort of waste emissions, was that they also made some water coolers.  I have absolutely no idea on what basis they bagged the Contract for such a complicated project in Feb. of 1990, when they engaged me to do the basic design and engineering of the scrubber system only in April of 1990.

The “Bomb Factory” is the nickname given by the local citizenry at Yelawal, some 40 Km from Mysore, on the Hunsur Road, to this establishment under the DAE.   The official designation on record of this plant is the “Rare Materials Processing ( RMP) unit.  The IREL website innocently claims that their products find use in such mundane industrial activities as manufacture of white pigments, welding electrodes, foundries, ceramics, refractories, abrasives for polishing glass/ TV tubes, and in sand blasting etc.  Whoever said they were processing materials for making atomic bombs ?

Now, all these hush-hush, high tech establishments of the Govt. of India operate at rarefied levels of technical excellence and integrity. Nuts and Bolts, Nitty Gritty of each piece of design and  engineering  is stripped bare and diligently scrutinized by battle hardened professionals from diverse fields of engineering and pure sciences. Indeed the civilians working in these companies carry ranks equivalent to those in the Indian Army such as Colonel, Brigadier etc., even as their designations will simply show :  Engineer- Grade E or some such monicker.  In this particular instance, the Director of the unit who had a PhD Degree in Chemical Engineering ( like yours truly) took a personal interest in the project, and toil I did  for my design to pass muster.

In a Scrubber, the target gas in vapour form (  HF in this case)  is absorbed in a liquid, in which the solute HF is soluble.   HF is present at 5 % concentration in a mixture with air, which is evacuated by means of two powerful air blowers in case of an emergency in the HF Storage Hall of the factory.  Design of a scrubber for such a System calls for several sets of Physical and chemical data : Chief among them are the Physical and chemical properties of the gas and liquid,  Solubility Curves of HF in Water / other scrubbing liquids,  Gas- Liquid Equilibrium Data, reactions of gas with the scrubbing liquid if any, Flooding velocities in the scrubber tower, Empirical equations for the kinetics of mass transfer from the gas to the liquid phase etc.  Precise data for several of these parameters not being readily available, one has to make judicious approximations using Raoult’s Law and Henry’s Law, and other applicable laws.

I made several trips to the Library of the Indian Institute of Science in those few days, ferreting out the requisite data from obscure technical Journals.  The IISc in those days allowed free and unfettered use of their Library to the general public :  A request to the Librarian, stating your purpose for use of their facility was all that was required.

The design, the calculations, and the technical report on the scrubber system were well received by the folks in the Bomb Factory.  Indeed during the mock trials and simulation of the emergency episode ( Accidental bursting of all HF cylinders in Building 17 of the RMP ), the system performed in an exemplary manner, with little or no adverse impact on the environment and surrounding habitations.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                          July 05, 2011

Footnote :

The Boffins in the Bomb Factory had overlooked a crucial factor in their initial design and tender specifications of the scrubber : they had proposed Potassium Hydroxide Solution ( KOH) as the scrubbing medium for capturing the Hydrofluoric acid.  In my report, I had pointed out that the reaction of HF with KOH would produce Potassuim Fluoride ( KF) , a sparingly soluble material, which would then precipitate out and clog up the scrubber tower, packed with Polypropylene fill media.  We then changed the scrubbing medium to water in the scrubber, and transferred the precipitation stage to outside the scrubber, using lime to produce CaF2, an easily disposable, harmless material, if handled properly.

A BIRD IN HAND

A BIRD IN HAND

Very early in my career as a professional consulting engineer, I learnt a lesson that I will never forget : the lesson was a reaffirmation of the age old adage – “ A bird in Hand is worth two in the Bush “.  I have now made it a Company Policy to view each assignment on its own merit, irrespective of blandishments of future prospects, repeat orders etc. The story unfolds thus.

A franchisee bottler of a multinational soft drinks company called me to design a treatment plant for the wastewaters emanating from his bottling operations in Bangalore.  The Owner hailed from a far Northwest province, universally acknowledged to be populated by an ethnic group born into this world with forked tongues and snake in the grass temperament.  But being a greenhorn in the business, just starting out, I chose to overlook this serious gap in the credentials of the client.

He sweet talked me into reducing my fee and also accept full payment upon completion of the assignment, assuring me of repeat orders at his other locations in  various towns of Karnataka.   I was suckered into the deal willy nilly, and started going about my business of designing the treatment plant.

Being the first of its kind assignment for me, I spent a good deal of time and effort in “Characterising” the wastewater in terms of quantity, discharge patterns, analysis of individual wastewater streams from the various departments in the bottling operations etc.  I put together a very good technical dossier on the wastewaters from the bottling unit.

I then presented my report on the Design of the Wastewater Treatment plant to the client along with my bill for professional services, as per agreed terms.  All he needed to do now was to submit it to the Pollution Control Board, seek its approval and implement the scheme.

The blackguard evidently balked at spending even the very reasonable costs projected by me for  executing the Treatment plant.  True to the traditions of his race, he made a deal with the local enforcement officer, bought time for implementation of the project, and forthwith junked my report, and along with it my bill as well.

When reminded to make the payment for my professional services, in complete seriousness he said “ I have not used your report  - why should I pay you ? “ .  I was aghast at this man’s utter lack of professionalism, and cursed him to be roasted in the fires of Hell.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                          July 04, 2011

Footnote :

There was some solace for me from this horrid experience : The technical knowledge gained through the exercise was put to good use later in a competitor’s bottlery, as also in the many breweries which I later had an opportunity to serve.

A CHEAP R.O. SYSTEM

A CHEAP R.O. SYSTEM

This story is about a cheap Reverse Osmosis ( R.O ) system ( as opposed to inexpensive) from an equally cheap vendor of treatment plants.  The story runs thus :

When I moved to Bangalore in the year 1986 and started my business in Environmental control, I used my by now familiar personal profile as an introduction to prospective clients.  An eagle eyed competitor got hold of my credentials, and came calling, offering to collaborate with me, if only he could use my profile in his sales pitches.  His Company was aptly named the East India Water Treatment Company, and by all accounts was no less mercenary or unethical than the illustrious predecessor he took after.  I readily agreed to his proposal and quoted a monthly fee as royalty to be paid to me for permitting him to use my name and credentials as his associate : that was the last I heard from him.

This intrepid entrepreneur, hailing from the North of the Vindhyas, was a flim flam artist par excellence.  He would prey upon the baser instincts, greed and avarice, more than ignorance of prospective clients, with active collusion from equally corrupt officials to sell them lemons for treatment plants.  A couple of examples should illustrate his style of work.

When called by a Chettiar ( Chettiars are the proverbial penny pinchers) owned Company in Bangalore to recommend a treatment plant for their manufacturing unit,  I quoted a certain sum of money as my consultancy fee for designing the Treatment plant.  I learnt a few months later that the scoundrel from the East India Company sold the Chettiar an entire “BlackBox” treatment system for less than the amount I had quoted for my consultancy services !

Not to be caught out, this clever operator also kept inventing new names for his Company every few years, to reappear in a new avatar : Over the years he transformed himself into  the “East Asiatic Company” ,  the “ Asiatic Society for preservation of Environment” and whatnot.  His fixation for the Asian continent still baffles me.

The icing on the cake of his audacious chicanery is best revealed in this classic case of Spy Vs. Spy type story.

DCM Limited, run by Lalas ( North Indian equivalent of Chettiars of the South) placed an order on the East India Company for an R.O System for water treatment, enticed by the ridiculously low price quoted by our con artist.  Now DCM Ltd. ( Delhi Cloth Mills ) started life as a Textile spinning mill in Delhi way back in 1889.  DCM now is a well diversified conglomerate into multifarious industrial activities.  Among other things, DCM make very fine Dhoties., typically made of 3 yards of the finest white spun cotton  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhoti )

Having committed to supply the R.O system to DCM at an absurdly low price, East India Company was scratching its head to fill this order, and procrastinating. When pressurised by DCM to fulfill its obligations, our intrepid entrepreneur hit upon a brilliant idea !  He purchased A DCM Dhoti, then proceeded to tightly wind it around a PVC plastic pipe, put together the rest of the accessories needed for the system, and lo and behold ! He delivered the cheap R.O system to DCM Ltd. just in time.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                          July 04, 2011

Footnote :

I understand the O&M Manual supplied with the R.O system proudly but truthfully highlights the very low replacement cost of the “Membranes” used – “Comparable to the cost of a few yards of a fine quality DCM Dhoti “.  As Johnny Cash says “ Only Lies have to be covered up – Truth can run around naked”