Have you ever stopped to wonder what becomes of all those filthy, dirty dented barrels that are discarded every day after carrying petroleum products, solvents, chemicals, and other products that in some way go into what we wear or eat or make us mobile? Probably not.
They aren't just thrown away. Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of barrels tossed by the side of the road like beer or pop cans or forming a mountain at dump sites? It just doesn't happen. So, it is necessary to salvage those barrels and recondition them to be used again in fresh new colors and ready to have their second or fourth or fifth life transporting something which makes our lives just a little bit easier.

But then another just as serious problem is created. Greasy, slimy waste oil. It can't be drained into our sewers. It can't be recirculated. Chemicals could probably neutralize it or in some way dissipate it, but what about the cost and the presence of that chemical in your water?

Klausner Barrel of Cleveland, Ohio found the perfect solution. No supervision is needed. No waste oil or water is poured into the sewer system. The cleaned water can continually be used again. And, an oil reclaimer even comes and takes all the recovered oil away - approximately 3,000 gallons a week.

Grease and waste oil are drawn off the top of a settling tank enabling all of Klausner Barrel's water to be reused in its barrel stripping operation.

OIL SKIMMERS, INC. PROVIDED THE SOLUTION.

When Morton Kalusner, owner of Klausner Barrel, realized he was going to have to clean up the water his operation used, he began looking for something that would not need to be supervised or manually operated. He wanted something that wouldn't need continual maintenance due to the complexity of its design. He wanted a method to recover large quantities of many different types of oily wastes. And, he didn't want something that would take a large bite out of his profits.

The method he found to fill this steep bill was a floating tube system unlike any other waste oil retrieval system available, offered by Oil Skimmers, Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio. The closed-loop tube is made of flexible, specially formulated plastic which attracts oil, but not water as it slowly moves over, under and around debris and other trash. The collector tube is then continually drawn through scrapers, and the clean tube is returned to the water surface to gather more oil.

The simple design not only eliminates frequent maintenance, but makes whatever maintenance does become necessary a simple task. To ensure low maintenance, the external parts which contact the grit-laden oil on the collector tube as special high-abrasion-resistant ceramic, including the drive wheel, scrapers and pressure blocks.

"We originally bought one Model 5H oil skimmer. Shortly after that, we bought three more. They are all used at the same time, in different parts of our operation, each pulling out a little more oil," Klausner remarked. "I looked at other types of skimmers, but this one did the job for probably less money and without the maintenance that some other units would likely require.

"We reclaim 3,000 gallons of waste oil a week, but that includes all kinds and grades of oil. If it were all one kind or grade of oil, we could put all that reclaimed oil in a confinement tank and sell it for further use elsewhere. The way it is, I'm just glad somebody takes it away for me.

"Now, all of our water is reused. None is flushed into the sewers. The sludge is then captured and shipped out to an approved landfill."

After the barrels are reconditioned, they are repainted in the color of the company purchasing the "good as new" drums.

NO MORE OIL. NO MORE PROBLEM. THE 5H JUST KEEPS ON WORKING.

"Approximately 1,000 barrels go through here a day," states Klausner. "Two at a time are continually dumped into a vat containing a solution heated to 190° F to clean the barrels inside and out, stripping them of all impurities and even stripping off the paint. We then check the barrels for leaks, blow out the dents, repaint them in the color of the customer and then return them."

A lot of water is used. And, a lot of grease and oil is stripped from the thousands of barrels that go through Klausner Barrel each week. The Oil Skimmers, Model 5H will keep on handling this oily residue 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making life a little bit easier for the plant operator where tramp oil becomes a by-product.

BARREL INDUSTRY GREATLY AFFECTED BY CHANGE

At "a couple of million dollars in revenues," Klausner describes his business as medium-sized. Some operations of the same type are smaller and some are much larger. Approximately 40% of his business involves the reconditioning of the 55-gallon drums. The rest of his business involves the buying and selling of barrels.

To transport these many, many barrels, he owns seven tractors and 27 trailers, with four or five trucks on the road at one time. Klausner Barrel services an area covering Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York State as well as Ohio. And, newspaper clippings framed and yellowing with age hang on the wall, linking Klausner to different people and events, such as the 21 miles of barrels which Klausner supplied to detour traffic when the Harvard-Denison Bridge in Cleveland was under repair.

Eighteen people are employed at these operations, including Mort's son, Harry, who starts from the ground up during the summers getting ready to someday run this thriving business. He will be the fourth generation to have controlled Klausner Barrel. Mort's grandfather was a cooper, making barrels with wood and ropes at a time when just about everything was shipped in such containers.

As the years passed, things were shipped differently and packaged in other ways. The wood barrels gave way to steel. The population in America grew and it became necessary to reuse these barrels. With this necessity came the realization that we must protect our environment. And, that meant that industry had to clean up after itself.

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