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It’s said that “fences make good neighbors.” But if you’re in the waste business, you know it takes a lot more than that. When a landfill moves next door, neighbors usually don’t bring over a homemade apple pie. Instead, many think of the dreaded sights and smells that come along with the territory. Unfortunately, with the expansion of urban sprawl, many people are finding themselves with such an unlikely neighbor. However, there are resources available for those in the solid waste industry to help with odor, litter containment, and other unsightly problems so that we all can have a better chance of living in peace and harmony together. A Breath of Fresh Air
There are many products and equipment on the market to help with odor control at solid waste landfills and transfer stations. These products claim to get rid of the odor rather than masking it. In the past, landfills did not have the options that are available today. “What they used to do at landfills was mask the odor,” says Philip Coffey, managing director of OMI Industries. “They would try putting a smell into the air to overcome the odor. It just made it horrible, though, and the neighbors were saying, ‘Okay, we don’t like the garbage smell, and we really don’t like the cherry smell on top of it.’” Coffey says that as urban sprawl has expanded, the demand for odor control at solid waste sites forced the creation of more sophisticated technology to get rid of the odor. “Nowadays they are putting these [odor] systems into place as they plan the facility. Years ago, odor control wasn’t something that they thought they had to build into the process, but now you don’t have to convince them to do it: They know they have to do it.” OMI Industries has been supplying Ecosorb to waste-management facilities, paper mills, refineries, and industrial plants since 1989. The company has 2,000 customers in 31 countries. Ecosorb is an organic odor neutralizer. The product is most often diluted with water and vaporized or misted in the facility. “It absorbs the odor and traps it inside our molecule, and then the oils that surround our molecule react with the odor,” Coffey explains. All odors are compounds, he points out. “We are breaking them into elements, and elements don’t smell.” Following EPA guidelines, an independent laboratory tested Ecosorb for human toxicity. In all cases, including acute oral toxicity, acute dermal toxicity, acute inhalation toxicity, primary eye irritation, primary dermal irritation, and dermal sensitization, the product received the safest possible classification. “Our product’s material safety data sheet is identical to water. Obviously, these landfills have to be concerned with what they are spraying into the air because their neighbors are going to say, ‘Okay, the odor is gone, but what has happened to it?’ Just telling them isn’t enough; they want to know what it is, and the beauty of this technology is that it is all-natural,” Coffey says. Another company, Enzymatic Odor Solutions Inc. (EOSI), has been helping the world smell better for the past 15 years. The company manufactures an enzyme-based product, which it blends with essential oils. EOSI also manufactures equipment for the application of the product. “The application equipment that we have is made to attack different specific sites at a landfill or transfer station,” says Mike Durham, president of EOSI. “We’ll go out to a landfill and identify what we call site-specific odor sources—in other words, odor sources throughout the site. It will usually boil down to one to four sources. Then we categorize them by intensity. Then we come back to address those sites by intensity with a plan of attack by using a specific type of equipment.”
Among the equipment EOSI manufactures are a low-pressure spray system, a high-pressure fogging system, a headerline distribution system, and a tractor-mounted sprayer. “We’re doing a project in Ohio for leachate where this landfill is pumping leachate out from under the landfill and reapplying it back on top using big agricultural sprayers, and it was being prohibited because of odors,” says Durham. “What we are doing is injecting my product into the spray line, and they are able to do that with very little odor. That’s one kind of unique application that we can do that not everyone can.” “You have to have the right combination of odor control agent and application system and understand how to use them in conjunction, because basically the product is no better than the application and the application is no better than the product,” says Durham. The company HLS Ecolo has two product lines, which include equipment and formulations for odor control. The chemical formulations for odor can be put into four categories: reactants, neutralizers, surface treatment, and incorporation treatment. These can be applied by vapor systems, atomizing systems, spraying systems, scrubbers, and dosing systems. The company’s formulations for odor control use essential oils from plant extracts, each blended to neutralize a specific type of odor. The dispensers atomize these essential oils and distribute them into the air in measured concentrations. The company has technicians that will evaluate the site and come up with a plan of what is good for that particular site. The company has been in the odor-control business for 30 years and knows how unpleasant odors can affect the neighbors. “The big thing for us is helping that condo or apartment make sure it keeps its value. Garbage can be one of the things that people complain about the most,” says Paul Chapple, vice president of sales and marketing for HLS Ecolo. “We want to make sure that property can maintain its value. We can’t physically get rid of garbage, so we hide the garbage by getting rid of the smell. We can hide the garbage truck by getting rid of the smell, and we can hide the landfill by getting rid of the smell.” Currently there are no instruments to monitor low concentrations of odors and gases at landfills. However, scientists at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom recently invented a device that works like an electronic nose, remotely monitoring bad odors and methane gases at waste landfill sites. The device has four sensors, which analyze the composition of gases in the air. The air is sucked in by the device at regular intervals and then profiled. The chemical profile of the air is then sent in real time through a built-in GPS modem to a remote computer. Based on the concentrations of various chemicals, the system is able to determine whether the methane gases or the odors have reached an unacceptable level.
Eliminating Nuisance Landfill Odors The landfill’s odor experts suggested that the landfill operator contact Benzaco Scientific and enlist the company’s aid to remedy the odor issue. The Benzaco team visited the facility, surveyed the operations, interviewed operating personnel, and received a materials safety data sheet for the material in question. Based on these factors, the treatment plan was recommended and a trial began immediately with representatives from the local regulatory commission, the EPA, and the hauling company on hand. As a result, the odor is gone. Thanks to a motivated landfill staff and inventive engineering from the Benzaco team, the odors have been eliminated. The landfill is now accepting up to six loads of sludge per day.
Clearing the Way Stanton Systems has been manufacturing tire-wash systems in the United States since 1986. “I was building car- and truck-wash systems before we got started with the tire-wash systems, because the need was there,” says Dennis Stanton, president and founder of Stanton Systems. The company manufactures modular and concrete-based tire-wash systems. These systems clean the tires with strong volumes and the right pressure of water. “It’s like a car wash, but it’s kind of like going through a monsoon,” says Stanton. “One gallon of water weighs 8 pounds, and that mixed with pressure enables you to do some pretty good cleaning, sometimes thrashing 25,000 pounds of water at the dirty tires and The company is moving into its new manufacturing facility this spring to increase its customer base of 200 customers throughout the United States. The systems require little maintenance and come with a five-year warranty. “The only maintenance is getting the mud out of the pit that we collect it in. They usually super-suck it out or use a loader,” Stanton says. The company’s systems are collectively washing 13 million trucks a year and will likely double that shortly as landfills find that washing tires before the trucks get on to public highways has many hidden advantages and benefits.
A leading brand in the worldwide wheel-washing market, with over 2,000 operating units in Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, is the MobyDick product line manufactured by Frutiger, a company based in Winterthur, Switzerland. Consisting of 20 different models, the systems are designed to accurately satisfy numerous washing needs for a wide variety of applications. Systems include the MobyDick Junior, a compact roller-unit designed for short-term applications, and the MobyDick Ultra, a custom-developed system designed to meet a customer’s particular requirements. With an emphasis on simplicity, MobyDick washing systems are intended to be low-maintenance and easy to operate. Rather than spraying each truck with a high-pressure stream of water, MobyDick systems utilize a high-volume wash to clean off material, reducing the potential for plugged spray nozzles. Designed with a recycling reservoir, water usage is kept at very efficient levels, despite the high-volume action. Additional features are available for such specialized needs as high-volume throughput to 120 washes per hour, automatic solids dewatering and discharge, surface-mounted portable systems, automated flocculent and disinfection systems, oil separation, post-wash drying, and even heating solutions for cold-weather applications. “The MobyDick system is designed to be easy to use and require very little maintenance,” says Ron Myer, site engineer for Waste Management Inc.’s Grand Central Sanitary Landfill in Pen Arygl, PA. “It’s more of an install-and-forget piece of equipment, and that’s exactly the way we wanted it. An unexpected benefit from the MobyDick is that our maintenance shop spends less time to repair our fleet as the wheel wash keeps the trucks a lot cleaner.”
Clearing the Air The company has been in business for three years and has sold more than 100 machines. The machine can either be purchased or rented. “They can rent it for a week, and if they don’t like it then they don’t pay the rent—they are just responsible for shipping,” says Edwin Peterson, president of Dust and Odor Control Technology. Odor control agents can be added to the machine, but the company does not manufacture them. “We pride ourselves on not having a proprietary chemical,” says Peterson. “We can run anybody’s chemical through our system.” Ken Tritz, operations manager for Resource Recovery Technologies in Minneapolis, MN, has been using the DustBoss for two years. “We deal in construction debris at a transfer station, and in order to get a good payload we hit it with a regular landfill trash compactor—so that creates a lot of dust for us,” Tritz says. “We would use a fire hose to knock some of the dust down, but it didn’t do the best job and it also used up a guy just standing there holding a hose spraying it around.” Since using the DustBoss, Tritz says he has noticed a big difference in the air quality, and he no longer has to use up the manpower expended by a worker holding a hose all day. “It was a night-and-day difference. Before, on a real bad day, you couldn’t see through the building. After using the DustBoss, it was clear.”
Containing Litter Another method of containing litter is with the application of a daily cover to the landfill. Enviro Group Inc. uses Formula 480, a spray-on liquid-clay application. “It’s an emulsion that is mixed with water and sprayed on. It is a clay-based product that is used in landfills, contaminated land sites, and erosion control,” says John Garver, vice president for Enviro Group Inc. “It covers the area in a thin layer that holds down blowing litter, contains odors, and stops erosion or runoff from the site.”
A Different Kind of Animal The company has set out to change the way solid waste is transported and stored in a way that may be more economically and environmentally sound. The company uses an innovative technology by which the waste is compressed and then wrapped in several layers of plastic to create cylindrical bales. These bales are then transported by railcar to various landfills. “The idea was tied to my observation and assumption that the waste being generated out of the densest watersheds in the country—which tend to be along the coasts and major cities—was having to be moved further and further distances to be disposed of, putting tremendous pressure on the system in place that was almost exclusively truck-based,” says David Stoller, chief executive officer for TransLoad America. “I believed that rail as an alternative could become a very advantageous way to move that same material long distances—and more advantageous from an economical as well as environmental standpoint.” The company is currently testing its product in Long Island and California, having acquired rail yards in Michigan, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, and owning landfills in Ohio and Utah. One of the advantages of using railcars instead of trucks is that a single boxcar can carry 100 tons, whereas a traditional semi trailer can only carry 22 tons, thus using less fuel and creating fewer emissions. But transporting by rail does have its obstacles. “Rail is easier said than done because it involves a whole different operational approach in terms of loading and unloading,” Stoller says. “You have to deal with railroads and understand how they operate. You have to have a whole different system of managing your fleet and managing your turns, which is [a matter of] when you send the cars out and how long it takes to get them back. You have to have railcars that have the capacity and are engineered to handle this material and move it, and you have to have landfills that function best if they are served directly by rail. “We are very much in the forefront. It’s not that railroads have not been used before, but it’s been somewhat static. The reason, in my view—aside from the fact that very few people in the waste industry, I believe, have made the effort to develop the expertise and skills to deal with railroad—is that they also haven’t made the investment in railcars and the things that can make it successful. It’s a big bite, so it really hasn’t grown in the past. I think once you cross over a certain point—as I think has been crossed where distances start to become significant—rail can be the answer, and I think we’re proving that.” One such obstacle—and hence the creation of the baling process—was that of containing these massive loads of solid waste on the railcars. Previously the only other option was to use heavy steel containers. “These were problematic from our point of view because they were expensive, they did not do a complete job of eliminating the odor or leakage, they required significant logistics management of where to put these containers when you unloaded them, and you also had to clean them before you sent them back,” Stoller says. “We as a company said we are not going to move garbage until and unless we could find a way to do it where we could use the same cars, and it occurred to us that the only way to do this theoretically would be shrink-wrapped, medically sealed bales that themselves constituted, effectively, disposal containers.” This baling technology was acquired from Germany, and it creates bales that are air- and watertight and that emit no odor, leachate, or biodegradation. The bales range in size from 46 inches in diameter and height, holding 1.25 tons of debris, to 82 inches in diameter and height, holding 6.5 tons of debris. A machine called the Speedbaler can compress and wrap 28 of the smaller bales per hour, whereas the larger Megabaler can compress and wrap 18 of the larger bales per hour. “This technology allows us to wrap these bales with high compaction, eliminating all of the normal nuisance factors of smell, leakage, pest, birds, et cetera. It enables us ... to store this material in bales either at the origin point, like a transfer station, or at the destination point, the landfill, and store it for indefinite periods of time without the nuisances,” Stoller says. Another advantage to baling is that it eliminates the need for daily cover that some landfills disperse regularly to help contain debris. “When you think about it, when you spread 6 inches of material every day over the material that was that day deposited, you’re using up a lot of space over the long term,” Stoller says. Stoller also has higher hopes for these massive bales of garbage. He hopes that they may be used in the future to create energy. “By having these bales available to be reused, it reserves the possibility of this landfill basically providing ... these in the generation of alternative byproducts, whether it’s gasification, liquid fuels, or electricity, and we think that is very significant and made possible only by the fact that you now have the ability to store this material for long periods of time,” he says. Contributing writer Nikki Stiles is a journalist based in the city of Fairmont, WV. MSW - July/August 2007
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