Fat Traps & Grease Arrestors
What the kitchen does not catch, the biological plant cannot survive.
The technology explained.
A fat-trap or grease arrestor is a primary interception chamber sized for at least 30–60 minutes of hydraulic retention. Kitchen wastewater enters; fats and oils rise to the surface, heavier food solids settle to the bottom, clarified middle-water passes onward. Scheduled pump-outs remove the accumulated grease cake before it can overflow.
- Intercepts fats, oils and greases (FOG) before they enter the sewer or biological plant.
- Captures food solids that would otherwise blind downstream screens and pumps.
- Prevents pipe blockages, blower failures and biological-reactor upsets.
- Provides a controlled removal point for scheduled FOG disposal under waste manifest.
- Commercial kitchens — hotels, lodges, conference venues, restaurants, food halls.
- Food-processing facilities discharging to a biological treatment plant.
- Sites discharging to sewer where the local authority enforces FOG limits.
- Anywhere kitchen flow joins black-water before treatment.
- ×Not a treatment step — FOG is intercepted, not destroyed; pump-out and disposal route are mandatory.
- ×Undersized or unmaintained traps fail silently and overflow downstream — schedule is non-optional.
- ×Not designed for non-kitchen wastewater (sanitary, laundry) — these need separate primary treatment.
- ×Does not address dissolved BOD or nutrients in kitchen wastewater.
Where Fat Traps & Grease Arrestors is used.
- Commercial kitchen drainage
- Hotel & lodge food-prep areas
- Food-processing pre-treatment
How HidroVerse deploys Fat Traps & Grease Arrestors.
Upstream of every wastewater plant whose influent contains kitchen flow. We size the trap against the actual hydraulic and FOG load, specify pump-out frequency in the maintenance contract, and route disposal through a licensed FOG-waste contractor with manifest reconciliation.
A typical Fat Traps & Grease Arrestors treatment chain.
A grease arrestor is one part of an integrated wastewater system — sized for the kitchen, maintained on schedule, manifested to a waste contractor.
Pre-treatment
Coarse food-solids strainers at point-of-use sinks and dishwashers, with scheduled cleaning.
Core stage
Sized FOG arrestor providing 30–60 minutes hydraulic retention; FOG floats, food solids settle, clarified middle-water passes onward.
Post-treatment
The downstream wastewater train — biological reactor (MBBR, SBR, MBR), clarifier, tertiary polishing — receives feed conditioned to manageable FOG load.
Waste handling
Scheduled FOG pump-out under waste manifest; disposal via licensed FOG-waste contractor with reconciliation against the manifest.
Buyer's guide.
The questions every commercial buyer should put on the table before signing for a water system. Can't see yours? Send us a brief — a HidroVerse specialist replies within one business day.
Yes — we keep a current reference list organised by application and scale. After a short qualifying call we release names, contacts and (with the host's permission) site-visit options. The conversation between two operations managers is the most honest reference we can offer; we do not gate-keep it.
We start with a SANAS-accredited feed-water panel, profile your demand against verified occupancy or production data (not brochure numbers), and specify against the worst-credible feed and peak demand — with disclosed margins. If a simpler technology will hit the brief, we'll specify the simpler technology and tell you why. We do not earn more by over-spending you; we earn more by you renewing service contracts year after year.
PFD, P&IDs, sizing calculations against verified influent data, equipment schedules with serial numbers, control philosophy, pre-treatment justification, waste-handling and regulatory compliance trail. Audit-ready by an external ECSA-registered engineer is the standard we design to — not a brochure pack with marketing fluff.
Pre-treatment is technology-specific (sediment, hardness, chlorine, biological load) and non-optional. Skipping it is the single largest cause of premature failure on every membrane, media bed and disinfection stage. Watch for suppliers quoting only the core stage — they are selling you a 12-month problem.
Every consumable and major component has a quantified replacement trigger (differential pressure, flow drop, UV intensity drop, salt-passage drift). Replacement schedules and trigger limits are written into the HidroVerse Care contract — visible, auditable and triggered on monitoring data, not guesswork.
Critical components are specified with duty/standby and automatic fail-over so a single failure does not stop supply. Our SLA on critical lines is 4 hours on site; the median lived response over the last 14 months is 2 hours 40 minutes. Telemetry triggers tickets before the operator notices — most failures are flagged, not phoned in.
Continuous telemetry on flow, pressure, conductivity, turbidity and on-skid water quality. Monthly SANAS-accredited compliance sampling is included on HidroVerse Care — not invoiced piecemeal. The audit pack builds itself monthly so when DWS or your insurer arrives, the file is ready in 30 minutes.
Potable applications: SANS 241:2015 (mandatory under the Water Services Act 108 of 1997), the National Water Act 36 of 1998 for abstraction and discharge, NSF/ANSI component certification, WHO Guidelines for design margin. Wastewater: the relevant DWS discharge authorisation under General Authorisation 665 or a site-specific Water Use Licence. We sign off against the legal floor and design to a margin above it.
Survey 1–2 weeks, design 2–4 weeks, install 4–10 weeks, commissioning and proof of compliance 1–2 weeks — typically 8–14 weeks for a lodge or estate, longer for mining and municipal. Delays come from civil works, third-party council approvals and architectural changes; the engineered scope rarely slips.
Survey, lab analysis, design pack, equipment, install, commissioning, operator training, the first year of monthly compliance sampling and the agreed scope of HidroVerse Care. Civils, electrical reticulation, third-party council fees and any architectural integration work are quoted separately and scheduled into the contract. If your quote has 'allowances' and 'provisional sums' across the page, you are buying a future invoice.