This year marks 40 years that Conversion Technology Inc. (CTI) has been in business. CTI was founded by PH Haroz in 1986 as a firm to design systems for the conversion of waste material to energy and useful byproducts. We completed the design and installation of a system fueled by cotton seeds halls to generate process steam and cogenerate power. We also designed a few systems enabling cotton gins to generate all the energy it needs for drying the raw cotton by converting the cotton waste to energy using cotton waste to provide energy for cotton gins. This is where the name Conversion Technology came from. While designing those projects we had to address environmental problems for those systems, mainly air pollution. In the middle 80’s, energy prices were falling down sharply after the energy crisis of the 70’s (the same period as we are now in after the energy crisis of the last couple of years. Another proof that history repeats itself). On the other hand, demand for environmental and safety consulting increased dramatically with new regulations.
PH decided to switch from a firm consulting conversion of waste to energy into a firm consulting on the conversion of environmental and safety problems into feasible solutions. This is what CTI has been doing since. There were exciting and stormy milestones along the way as new regulations coming down the pipeline and CTI staff helping our clients come up with workable solutions to stay in compliance. Examples of main new regulation and rules that we helped our client’s with were: Clean Air Act including Major Source Title V Permitting, Clean Water Act including Stormwater permitting, OSHA machine safety regulations, combustible dust requirements, and robot safety standards.
Another big milestone was when Adam Haroz, the founder’s son, joined the firm after completing his education as a Mechanical Engineer. Fifteen years later, Adam is the Director of Engineering overseeing all of the safety and environmental departments. Adam led the rebranding of CTI with our IT manager, Howard Marlow, who has been with CTI for over 30 years.
We are honored to have worked with you, our outstanding clients and friends, over the years. We could not have gotten this far without all of you, including our talented staff, and their supportive families. You are all a part of the CTI family. We look forward to continue working with you, thank you for the opportunity.