NCD980602163_19811002_Warren County PCB Landfill_SERB C_Letter from EOI to Dr. Huisingh-OCR

~ PCB MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
201 Eye Street, S.W./Suite 823
Washington, D.C. 20024
(202)554 ·0912
2 October 1981
Dr. Donald Huisingh
Toxic Substances Project
State of North Carolina
Office of the Governor
Raleigh, NC 27611
Dear Dr. Huisingh:
Thank you for your inquiry regarding EOI 1s diesel combustion system for
destroying PCB liquids. As EPA 1 s former Deputy Assistant Administrator
for Chemical Control, I was also involved with the illegal dumping problem
in North Carolina and am very appreciative of the magnitude of the problem
you face.
With regard the EOI diesel combustion system, it is a mobile system intended
to provide liquid PCB destruction capability at remote sites where it is
either too costly or infeasible to ship liquid PCB's to conventional dis-
posal sites. As a process, it could not economically compete with the com-
mercial facilities, namely, the high temperature incinerators owned by Ensco
or Rollins . The process was licensed from a Canadian company and has been
evaluated and approved by the Canadian EPA, Environment Canada. Basically,
it involves burning PCB's diluted to low cpncentrations in diesel fuel in a
conventional diesel engine . The exhaust gas is scrubbed by a pair of scrub-
bers with organic and aqueous media. The aqueous scrubber removes the HCl
and the organic scrubber removes trace organics for recycle to the diesel.
At the present time there are two obvious options to disposing of the con-
taminated soils ---chemical waste landfill or high temperature incinera-
tion. Each of these options would involve long distance transportation
at very large costs. In-situ treatment of the contaminated soils might be
a cost effective option. EOI is aware of several proprietary processes in
early stages of development which show promise. These approaches include
a unique mobile incinerator concept , a bacteriological process, and a chem-
ical fixation process. We would like to evaluate the potential applica-
bility of these processes to your contaminated soils problem. If you
could arrange to send us a typical sample of about 10 pounds of the con-
tami nated soil we would be pleased to perform some laboratory scale
experiments at no charge to the state. If the results are promising, we
would then be pleased to share the process details and our findings with
you.
If you would like to have additional information, please contact us. We
look forward to your response to our invitation to do the laboratory
screening studies.
Sincerely,
~ o t)--r ,U
17fv:-t; u . ,:7),,:7,,~ ,✓-i,~v-
(,!c hn P. DeKany ()
. lfi ce President ,
t~esearch & Development