Environmental Management Inc. opened a hydrotreating unit in Kansas City, Kan., where it will produce 9 million gallons of rerefined and recycled transformer oil per year.
In construction for the past two years, the hydrotreating and rerefining unit upgrade allows the transformer oil recycling firm to increase its annual used oil collection capacity by about 30 percent and its total production capacity by 7 million gallons.
EMI currently purchases oil from clients spanning from Virginia to Oregon, and sales cover an area from Pennsylvania to Wyoming and Canada, EMI President Jack McDonald said. The new plant will enable EMI to accept all qualities of transformer oil, McDonald told Lube Report. If [some] transformer oil is not acceptable to run through our new hydrotreating system, out of which we will produce 60 viscosity naphthenic mineral oil, we will run it through our existing system and sell to our current customers that purchase recycled transformer oil.
Oil with hazardous polychlorinated biphenyls contamination levels up to 49 parts per million can be accepted into the facility for rerefining or recycling, McDonald said. All oil will be processed through the new hydrotreating system except that which contains elevated levels of silicone, which McDonald expects may be around 10 percent of the total volume of what’s received. That oil will be processed through EMIs existing 3,600-square foot dechlorination system which the company still operates within an enclosed concrete dike containment building.
Headquartered in Kansas City, Kan., EMI has been in the transformer oil recycling business since 1997.