Ground Support Worldwide - 32

GROUND SUPPORT
EQUIPMENT

bury calls "business nirvana" - a level near
complete offset. Both Bradbury and Thurlow say it's an achievable goal.
"I believe it is achievable. It just takes a
little time to get there. It's a new industry,
new in Portland, but we've cut into the
operating cost quite a bit in Portland and
we're continuing to grow and move forward,"
Thurlow says.

The Memphis Way
Fourteen hundred miles away, the Memphis
International Airport is currently underway
with phase one of a three-phase project to
construct a new central deicing facility (CDF).
"We're being driven by an environmental
stewardship, wanting to do the right thing
and do a better job of collecting spent aircraft
deicing fluid and following best practices,"
explains Terry Blue, Memphis International
Airport's Vice President of Operations.

The construction of the deicing pad is
being spurred, in part, by the expiration of
the airport's National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued
by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).
"The airport has always been in compliance with that permit. However, that
permit expired at the end of 2018 and it
carries forward until a new one is issued.
Our application for a new one is in to TDEC
right now and through collaborative communication with them for a few years, we
knew that the bar was going to be raised.
So, this is industry best practice and the
airport authority has always strived to be
good stewards of the environment and this
is proof positive of that," elaborates Blue.
MEM's pad will collect spent ADF
through a passive collection, with the spent
fluid being collected in trench drains and

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32 GROUND SUPPORT WORLDWIDE

MAY 2019

fed into the sanitary sewer for processing by
the city's publicly owned treatment works.
"The glycol will drip off the wings of the
aircraft into the trench drains and gravity
fed into the sanitary sewer," explains Blue.
As it is currently, airlines at MEM deice
at their gates around the terminal building, with glycol being collected by vacuum
trucks. The CDF will consolidate MEM's
deicing operations and bring new technology to the process.
"The CDF is being designed with a glycol supply system, with load stations in
the vehicle safety zones between the bays
so trucks, after they have spent their load,
do not have to drive across taxiways back
to a central location, they can reload at the
vicinity of the bay," explains Blue. "The
facility will also have electronic message
boards and IP addressable taxiway centerline lights that will provide visual guidance
for safe and efficient communications. So,
the lighting and signage will lead pilots out
of and into the bays, eliminating the need
for marshallers on the ground. And deicing
communications will be conveyed over the
message boards, as well."
The CDF will comprise of two deicing
pads, for a total of 12 bays, Blue says, 11 of
which are sized for Aircraft Design Group
5 - a Boeing 747 or Boeing 777 - with the
other bay designed for a Boeing 747 800
series freighter in mind. In total, the size of
the CDF will be roughly 3,260,000 square
feet, or 56.5 football fields.
Blue says the CDF will open in phases,
with phase one opening the winter of 2020.
"One of the pads, or six bays, should open
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