Just in time for winter, a new facility that recycles the fluid used to de-ice planes at Syracuse's Hancock International Airport is ready to go.
Set back in a field next to the airport, several large cylinders jut into the sky behind a large square building. Shiny silver pipes are intertwined between the structures. Opened up, there’s a slight hum coming from the machinery.
It’s all part of a $19.4 million facility that will recycle glycol, the main component in aircraft de-icing fluid.
“This is the first facility in the world that is able to evaporate low concentration and get to 100% glycol that is needed for aircraft," Hancock International Airport Director Jason Terreri said. He said from now on, aircraft will have to be sprayed on 3 special de-ice pads that are sloped.
"When you spray the icing fluid, glycol, on the aircraft, it's collected out on the pads," Terreri said. "It's piped here. We run it through a distillery effectively and turn it back into glycol."
Airlines that come through Syracuse are then able to buy the recycled glycol at a discount. Gabriel Lepine, executive vice president at Aeromag, the de-icing company that came up with the idea, said the entire process will create more glycol than is needed for the planes that pass through Syracuse.
"The need in Syracuse is about 200,000 gallons, but the system can make a little bit over 600,000 gallons per year," Lepine said. "And so if we go to maximum capacity, we could have safely 400,000 gallons capacity that can be made available to regional airports or also into other airports where we also spray."
That includes the three New York City area airports, as well as Boston and Cleveland. The other positive said Terreri, is savings to the airport in fees it won’t need to pay Onondaga County to dispose of the used glycol. Terreri said savings help sell Hancock.
"By lowering the costs for the airline partners, that's one of the factors when they're evaluating different markets with coming into somewhere like Syracuse, which is the lower cost they can do better here," Terreri said. "So the passengers aren't going to see a real big difference, but as an airport, it's helping position us to be more competitive."
