Sep. 27--GREEN -- Akron-Canton Airport is ready for winter with its new environmentally friendly deicing facility and treatment plant.
On Wednesday, the airport unveiled a $10 million plant that will reduce discharges of glycol, the main ingredient in aircraft deicers.
A system designed by the airport and the second of its kind in the world uses bacteria that feed on the glycol. The system also relies on carbon filters.
Glycol lowers the freezing point of water. It is sprayed on airplanes to remove snow and ice and to assure safe takeoffs.
But glycol can cause environmental problems if it is discharged into streams. It uses up oxygen, and that hurts fish and aquatic insects.
In 2003, Akron-Canton Airport was required in its permit from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to develop plans to reduce glycol discharges within 54 months. That led the airport to develop the new facility, which was largely finished by Sept. 1.
Other Ohio airports were ordered to take similar steps earlier, in some cases back in the early 1990s.
The system Akron-Canton developed was patterned after one created at Albany International Airport in the late 1990s.
In July 2005, construction was started on two concrete deicing pads on the south side of the airport, just north of Mount Pleasant Road.
The southern pad can hold up to three 717 commercial jetliners at one time, while the north pad can accommodate one full-size jet or two or three private aircraft.
The glycol will run off into a drainage system and be stored in two partially buried 750,000-gallon tanks.
The contaminated runoff will be funneled into the Anaerobic Fluidized Bed Reactor System, heated and then channeled through two large reac tors, where bacteria inside the tanks will eat the glycol.
Additional carbon will be removed from the water via a cyclonic spinlike cycle.
The nearly 100 percent clean water will be re-oxygenated and released to a pond on airport property.
The system can process up to 50 gallons a minute.
Byproducts of the process are methane gas, which will be used to heat the liquids and the building, and a small amount of sludge, which will be discarded.
The bacteria will hibernate in the summer, when the system is not in use. A little sugar will enable the biotic community to grow and restore the bugs for winter use.
The project was funded by two $5 million federal grants arranged by U.S. Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Navarre.
"This new plant is important, not only to our airlines but also to our neighbors and streams," airport director Fred Krum said. "We are really proud to be releasing very clean water from our new facility."
In a typical winter month, about 3,000 airplanes will need to be deiced before departure, airport spokeswoman Kristie Van Auken said.
Deicing has been handled at the gates in the past, but all of it will now take place on the two pads, assistant airport director Rick McQueen said.
It takes 300 to 500 gallons of heated glycol-water to deice a typical jetliner, McQueen said.
The airlines will continue to handle the deicing operations and the airport will manage and run the glycol-treatment plant, he said.
The airport used 135,710 gallons of glycol in 2005.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or [email protected]
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