Not long after Dean Keller purchased Enviro-Care, he discovered that his company’s main product — a bacteria used to eat food service grease — wasn’t working effectively, even though previous laboratory studies indicated that the approach should work. To find out why, and what he could do about it, Keller enrolled in the NMSBAP and worked with a Sandia chemist to study the problem.
The result? It was discovered that the grease-eating bacteria were dying off quickly because of a lack of oxygen in the environment. Enviro-Care and Sandia developed a simple approach to the problem: a custom “aeration system” designed to pump oxygen into the tank, thereby creating a micro waste water treatment system right inside the holding tank. The technique has been so successful that Keller is now poised to market his product nationwide.
Source: New Mexico Business Weekly, “Firm Cuts the Grease”, Andrew Webb, Oct. 27, 2003.