Industrial Waste Treatment
At
Scovill Manufacturing Company
Waterbury, Connecticut
THOMAS L. JESTER, Project Manager
Metcalf & Eddy, Inc.
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
THOMAS H. TAYLOR, Chemical Engineer
Scovill Manufacturing Co.
Waterbury, Connecticut 06720
INTRODUCTION
The Scovill Manufacturing Company was founded in 1802 as a small button factory on
the banks of the Mad River in Waterbury, Connecticut. Its first products were made from
pewter or tin alloys, however the market for "hard" buttons made from copper and brass
strip led to the founding of Scovill's now extensive copper and brass operations.
Today, Scovill is a highly diversified corporation engaged in the manufacture of a wide
range of consumer, industrial and automotive products, operating largely in new plants
designed for the efficient fabrication of specific product lines.
The Waterbury complex, as well as being the site of Scovill's Corporate Headquarters,
houses three of its largest Operating Divisions.
The Metals Division produces basic strip, sheet, rod and wire products in this country's
largest independent brass mill.
The General Products Division operates a large contract manufacturing shop
specializing in custom-made products for industry and the automotive field.
The Apparel Fasteners Division produces a wide variety of snap fasteners, grippers
and industrial "Blind Rivets."
These divisions are housed in a complex of more than 100 buildings with a total floor
space of approximately 2.8 million square feet. While there are a number of new buildings,
waste treatment considerations were complicated by the predominance of old multi-story
buildings.
Wastewaters from the Scovill complex include sanitary waste, cooling water, oily
waste and metals bearing wastes which are referred to as industrial waste and are the subject
of this paper.
WASTE CHARACTERIZATION
Scovill's industrial waste is a mixed metal finishing resulting from numerous metal
cleaning, plating and finishing operations. The major part of the waste flow comes from
rinses following various acid pickling baths used to remove annealing scale from brass. The
remainder of the waste flow is composed primarily of rinses from several large plating and
anodizing departments.
The industrial waste may be characterized as follows:
Flow — variable, 2,000 gpm 1st shift average.
pH — 2-3
Acidity — 500-800 mg/l (to pH 8.5 as CaC03)
Dissolved Metals — Cu 60 mg/1
An 23 mg/l
Cr+6  15 mg/l
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