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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Arctic Industrial and Automotive Supply
juggles environment, efficiency in business success Anchorage company looks to cutting-edge technology to deliver eco-friendly services
Amy Marie Armstrong Special to PNA
Environmental sensitivity that also benefits the bottom line is a motto for Les Roe as he strives to provide innovative products to his customers at Arctic Industrial and Automotive Supply.
“We try to supply our customers with cutting edge technology,” Roe said. “Early on, a big part of our business has been products that aid with environmental concerns.”
It’s one of the reasons why Roe established the Anchorage-based business in 1992.
Back then, Roe specialized in self-contained cabinet washers.
“At all levels, the oil industry was under fire for getting rid of solvents,” Roe explained. “Not only are solvents an environmental hazard, but they also are a health risk for workers.”
The self-contained cabinet washer is essentially like a gigantic dishwasher, Roe said. Instead of using solvents to strip grease from engines and other equipment parts under repair, mechanics could put the parts in the cabinet washer and let 200-degree water and biodegradable soap do the work.
“It was amazing because it did a better job of removing grease, and all of sudden folks did not have to deal with proper and expensive disposal of solvents,” Roe said. “We sold a lot of those all across the Arctic and the North Slope Borough.”
Building on that success, Roe began offering other products he thought beneficial. Putting the environment first He sells air filters made from cotton. The washable filters are guaranteed for 10 years or one million miles while providing better breathing and filtration for engines. His customers also find Royal Purple Synthetic Oils, a synthetic product proven to reduce emissions and decrease wear on moving parts. Roe also offers antifreeze recyclers, as well as solvent recyclers.
“Some people don’t want to give up solvents because they are so effective,” Roe said. “Now, they don’t have to throw used solvents away and keep spending money on the same product over and over again.”
Roe’s latest product addition has him thinking in lofty terms.
The machine is called the Waste-Oil-To-Energy Converter. Roe is the only warehouse distributor in Alaska, Western Canada, Washington and Oregon for the revolutionary invention that bonds used oil to diesel fuel.
“WOTEC means onsite disposal of all waste oils,” Roe said, adding it eliminates the practice of burning waste oils that is currently under increased federal scrutiny as an uncontrolled emission. “When you are burning waste oil, there is no way to control the quality of emissions. Oil burners have no way to filter out all the containments.” Innovative techniques WOTEC takes all sorts of oil — differential, power steering, hydraulic and transmission — and extracts contaminants while bonding them with virgin diesel fuel through a process called static blending.
“When this bonded fuel leaves the WOTEC system, it actually exceeds fuel specifications set out by manufacturers,” Roe said.
That’s good news for fuel users in remote Alaska, where fuel quality tends to be inferior and hard on engines.
“If you take this on a broader perspective, worldwide, diesel fuel producers are under the gun to remove more of the sulfur from the fuel because it is a major part of the pollutant going out into the atmosphere,” Roe said. “But unfortunately, sulfur is also a natural lubricant and so as our fuels become drier and drier, equipment users are seeing more wear and tear.”
Roe said WOTEC’s bonding of oil and diesel is an environmentally friendly progression of a practice already common to equipment users on the North Slope.
“For years, people have been taking oil from their oil pans and dumping it into diesel fuel,” he said. “There are a couple of problems associated with doing that. For one, the oil is not clean and, also, they had to use the fuel it was dumped into the same day. Otherwise the oil would separate from the fuel.” Extending shelf life Thanks to the static blending process, the newly bonded fuel can be stored in a holding tank for use as needed.
“The neat thing about WOTEC is that it is a system that pays for itself,” Roe said. “For every gallon of waste oil that runs through this machine, the machine converts it to a gallon of free diesel fuel.”
Roe offers three models of the WOTEC machine invented by Otto Jacobi and Dan Montegari of Global Energy Recovery Corp. in West Babylon, N.Y. The three versions range from $23,000 to $54,000. The top-end model is completely electronic and requires little human interaction.
“That is another issue in rural Alaska,” said Roe. “Manpower.”
The higher-end model was designed for power plants and is perfect for rural Alaska power plants that commonly use diesel fuel to power generators.
Yakutat Power Inc., a small municipally owned power plant supplying power to the 800 residents and businesses in Yakutat, installed a WOTEC system in December 1998. Satisfied customers Scott Newlun, general manager of Yakutat Power, said the agency had burned all of its stockpiled waste oil and was saving $1,500 a month in fuel expenses. That was more than double the $700 savings that agency planners estimated would be required to pay for the WOTEC machine.
Since then, Newlun said, Yakutat Power continues to realize the fuel savings and has noticed emissions from its exhaust stack are now a light gray instead of a dark color. The plant also tested the bonded fuel and found lubricant levels to be consistently higher.
“We are getting to know the machine even better,” Newlun said. “We are looking forward to next month when we do an overhaul on the power plant. It should be interesting to see what shape things are in.” Looking to the future That’s good news to Roe, who recently inked a deal with the Alaska Energy Authority, which has WOTEC machines operating in five Bush communities.
Roe also foresees WOTEC as an efficient fuel source for the myriad of machines working in the oil patch.
He said oil companies could follow the model of GO Transit in Toronto, Canada, where WOTEC machines are equipped with hand-held fuel pumps used for immediate fueling of transit buses.
“The possibilities are endless,” Roe said. “I am finding the environmental side of this business to be quite interesting.”
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