Key suppliers of the plants feedstock will be power companies. Particularly in the electricity industry, companies in some or all cases accumulate stocks of waste transformer oils, contaminated by PCB, a Hydrodec spokesman told Lube Report. In Japan they have pretty tough regulations for the allowable parts per million of PCB. A lot of transformer oil therefore is contaminated which makes it very difficult to get permits to transport.

Because of that difficulty, the key to choosing a site will be less a matter of access to rail, road or other transit and more about finding a site with close proximity to power supply companies that generate the polluted material. A heavy industrial zone would be the best description of, the future site, the spokesman said.

Hydrodec said its process technologies provide total dechlorination of PCB in a closed loop without the use of hazardous additives, without generation of hazardous byproducts and with minimal air emissions. Where PCB is contained in transformer oils from power industry sources, Hydrodec said its process can treat the PCB and refine the used transformer oil in a one pass process, allowing Hydrodec to recover the processed oil as new transformer oil.

Hydrodec chairman Neil Gaskell said the new venture reflects both the strength of our technology and our good relationship with Kobelco Eco Solutions. Progress towards launching the Hydrodec business in Japan continues to be positive.

In October 2008, commercial production began at Hydrodecs transformer oil rerefinery in Canton, Ohio. The 22,000 square foot plant, built at a cost of $16 million to $17 million, has capacity of 8 million gallons per year. The Canton facility uses a proprietary catalyst to remove impurities and produce a rerefined product the company describes as hydrogenation-refined naphthenic mineral transformer oil.