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Auto Bell 100% Reclaim Article

D

Dean Taylor

Dean Taylor, CATEC.com
In both PC & D and Modern Car Care magazines, The Auto Bell article boasts that they are recycling 100% of their water. It goes on to say that they only use 80% of the recycled water. This in itself makes it an 80% reclaim system, correct? (The real number is probably closer to 70% but we all know how reclaim companies lie....)

To acheive a 100% closed loop, the reclaim system must produce "rinse quality water" for final rinse as well as feeding the spot free rinse (RO) system. A BIO (bacterial) system as well as most other systems on the market are not capable of doing this.

To be completely honest, there is no such thing as a 100%, zero discharge reclaim system in a car wash. At some time, water must be discharged from the wash by means of overflow to sewer, septic or pumped and hauled from the site.

I think it's important to clarify this (no pun indended). Sugar-coating may look good on paper to gain zoning, permitting and community approval, but it's not reality.
 
Well Deano, right you are. Even Nasa, who has a considerably greater budget than most wash operations, does not have a 100% reclaim system for the space station. (Just where does that excess go?) I think this is just a clever case of so called green marketing. It's very difficult for sewer inspectors to accurately analyze a reclaim system, much less someone editing an article. They can proudly display this for their customers now though.
 
I know we are playing with words here, but if your water flows into a single collection sump that you pull from wouldn't you (in theory, at least) be recycling all water at least once? Hence the reference to 100%?

Autobell has the simplest reclaim system I have seen I believe it was a so-brite bubbler and re-circulator pump.
 
Autobells newest site has 100% recycle system. They have no connection to the cities sewer system at all. They treat all waste from the site. They are using a BIO system to burn their waste on site.
 
Could you supply any more info on this? I'm familiar with the bio concept, but am not clear what you mean by it "burning" the waste on site.
 
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