Case study 2

Problem :
A large fire took place at a southern Israeli power station. As a result, transformer oil containing Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB’s) was accidentally released into the station’s drainage system and found its way to the station’s cooling water
channels. Part of the water was contained due to emergency shut-off of the channels. These water were highly polluted with oil, heavy metals as Chromium and PCB’s. Levels of PCB’s in the polluted water reached 100 ppm, 100,000 times more then the allowed level of discharge of PCB’s to the environment – 1 ppb.

BEST Co. of Atlanta USA was selected as main supervising contractor for the remediation activities at the power station. In order for the station to resume its activities, its cooling water channels, carrying ~ 10,000 m3 (2,500,00 gal.) of PCB-polluted water had to be cleaned. At that time it seemed that the only solution was to transport these massive volumes of liquid waste to a remote industrial waste disposal site with great expense, causing environmental nuisance.

An Arrow Solution:
The IEC, who recognized Arrow’s capabilities in the field of mobile liquid waste treatment, has recommended that BEST Co. would undersign Arrow to provide an alternative for the costly and environmentally hazardous transportation of the waste to the remote disposal site. Arrow had accepted the challenge and placed a mobile liquid waste treatment unit at the power station. The effluents had to be discharged to the sea, hence, a purity level of less than 1 ppb was pre-set by the Israeli Ministry of the Environment. Arrow’s scientists and engineers have designed a custom-made physico-chemical treatment process, employing the mobile unit’s versatile functions. The result was clear effluents with less than 1 ppb of PCB. The water was tested daily using GC-MS by an USEPA-approved laboratory prior to discharging it to the sea. Treatment capacity reached 240 m3/day, operating for 24 hours.
Arrow’s mobile unit had treated all the contaminated water, facilitating the rapid renovation of the cooling water channels. The PCB’s were stabilized in semi-solid sediments having 1000 times less volume then the treated water. This inert sediment was safely transported to an approved hazardous waste landfill.