Many Food Plants, depending upon the types have significant side streams that can be isolated at the point of source and used elsewhere as a by-product or co-product.  For example, Beer companies have sent waste beer to make ethanol for fuel for engines. Some food processors send waste food that is low-grade quality to other companies that manufacture animal feed products. 

Many food plants do not have waste treatment plants or final effluent discharges and instead discharge directly to a POTW. They usually have some type of pretreatment and then discharge to a local P.O.T.W. Unfortunately, they can sometimes have high connection fees, in addition to surcharges for going over on BOD and TSS.  Publicly owned treatment works (POTW) that receive food-processing wastewater with BOD5 values greater than 250 to 300 mg/L typically will add an additional surcharge for treatment. Small changes to the process or additions of small levels of certain chemicals or bacterial products can lower the BOD/COD and TSS created and significantly lower these surcharges.  Check out our bioengineering page for more information or request case history examples.

Additional information on the Food and Beverage Industry Links
http://www.foodandbeverage-network.com/

Costs of managing food processing wastes depend heavily on the size and complexity of the operation. Common waste treatment practices include land disposal, anaerobic ponds, aerobic ponds, activated sludge, clarifiers and filtration.  Below are some benchmarks:  Approximately 90% of a dairy’s wastewater load is milk. Wastewater volume of "soft drink processes" is lower than in other food-processing sectors, but fermentation processes are higher in BOD and overall wastewater volume compared to other food-processing sectors. Meat, poultry, and seafood facilities offer a more difficult waste stream to treat. The killing and rendering processes create blood byproducts and waste streams, which are extremely high in BOD.

Water usage at a Food or Beverage facility can be high.

Beneficial Reuse

Boiler and Cooling Tower Blowdown

Oil and Grease- What is it and how to get rid of it

Food Plant Wastewater Case Histories

Dairy Industry Benchmarks and Case Histories

Beverage Industry

Winery Case Histories

EPA Office of Compliance Sector Notebook Project, Food and Beverage Industry.  More information can be obtained on the EPA website http://es.epa.gov/oeca/sector or by contacting Environmental Leverage

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There are tons of files containing information on every subject from A to Z on the internet with standards, benchmarks and industry BMP's.  The problems is, who has time to dig and find it all. It is not always in easy to find places.  We have tried to show you some of the ones we though might be useful. There are links to the places where we found some of them in case you want to dig deeper on a particular subject and find out more.

Meat Processing Overview

Meat processing includes slaughtering, processing, and rendering operations involving primarily cattle, hogs, and poultry.  Some plants handle only one type of operation, such as meat processing, but others carry out multiple operations including rendering., smoking, canning, freezing, and sausage making.

With annual sales of nearly $113 billion, the United States produces more meat for human consumption than any country in the world except China.  A third of all meat processing facilities are located in California, Illinois, Texas, and New York.  This industry has over 1,297 processing facilities that employ over 88,000 people and produces shipments greater than $22 billion each year.
The meat processing industry has been challenged in recent years by a variety of economic and safety issues.  It is an extremely volatile and competitive marketplace.  There has been rapid consolidation, high labor turnover rates, and some new federal safety rules such as HAACP regulations.  Public concerns over diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) and hoof and mouth disease, and increasing community and public opposition to meat processing operations have made operations difficult. 
The primary environmental impacts of the meat processing industry include pollutant releases to water, waste disposal, water use, and odors. Annually, the industry consumes about 150 billion gallons of water, at a cost of about $750 million. Wastewater includes significant amounts of biosolids such as particles of fat and blood (which may reach 20,000 tons annually at a large facility), as well as nitrogen and ammonia compounds, phosphorus, and chlorine.

Meat Packing Case History

Food Plants

The primary avenue for removal of solid waste has been its use in animal feed, cosmetics, and fertilizers. These solid wastes are high in protein and nitrogen content. They are excellent sources for recycled fish feed and pet food. Skeleton remains from meat processing are converted into bonemeal, which is an excellent source of phosphorus for fertilizers. FOG waste (typically from industrial fisheries) is used as a base raw material in the cosmetics industry.   http://www.usaep.org
 
Many beverage plants that produce juices or tea product a low pH effluent. Increasing the pH prior to the aeration basins or pretreatment area can significantly increase the biological activity of the bacteria for just a small cost. See "How Critical are the Critical 5 plus one"

Solutions:

DAF's of skimming tanks need to be adjusted to handle the solids loading and to capture the grease and oils

Screens can be used to prevent solids from entering the treatment plant such as peanuts at a chocolate factory

Make sure that if you use a DAF or API, that you optimize all the variables, the skimmer speed and rotation, the oxygen, the flights, the chemicals used, etc.

Watch what color the foam is on your aeration tank if you have one. A change from brown, to light brown to a crisp white foam can indicate a recent surge in BOD loading and can significantly impact your treatment process. Change your wasting rates or RAS or adjust with the use of bioaugmentation to try to catch up with the F/M loading. 

Tanks onsite  can be retrofitted or brought in and can be used to pre-treat influent prior to being discharged to a local P.O.T.W. and significantly lower the surcharges that are incurred due to high BOD and TSS fluctuations that often exist at a food and beverage plant. We have worked with a number of plants that used onsite treatment, or small package plants to pretreat their influent and saved 1/2 to one million dollars a year in savings, not to mention headaches and upsets to the local POTW.

In our photoshow above there is a photo of a combination RBC with trickling filter media used at a juice factory. Bioaugmentation with addition of micronutrients helped this plant lower their surcharges to the local POTW by 30-50%.

Did you know most biosolids can be land applied and have significant nutrient value. This can reduce the cost on N and P to the farmer by 30-50% depending upon the values measured in the cake solids and the crop nutrient requirements.

Antifoams- Basic information and when not to use them

Boiler and Cooling Tower Blowdown Cooling Tower Microscopic analyses

MicroClear 205 is a  powdered product that was developed for use in the biological wastewater treatment of food based greases, fats and oils. This product helps digest the fats, oils and grease that can cause problems with foaming and filamentous bacteria.

Audits and Onsite Training and Consulting

 In order to "Audit" or Troubleshoot a Food or Beverage wastewater treatment plant, a number of things need to be looked at. A physical walk-through of the plant needs to be conducted with visual observations noted. A microscopic analyses of the Biological portion of the waste treatment system needs to be conducted. Settleometer Testing needs to be conducted A sludge judge should be used on a Clarifier Examination of lab data- current testing procedures and results Walk through and correlation of process side to wastewater treatment plant operations A fully detailed final report is issued with process recommendations, system changes, areas for optimization and increased efficiency.

For a full onsite audit of your plant- Contact Environmental Leverage inc. 630-906-9791

More troubleshooting for Food and Beverage plants:

Troubleshooting Lagoon Systems

For a full onsite audit of your plant- Contact Environmental Leverage inc. 630-906-9791

Bioaugmentation for reduction of BOD and TSS

MicroClear 205 is a  powdered product that was developed for use in the biological wastewater treatment of food based greases, fats and oils. This product helps digest the fats, oils and grease that can cause problems with foaming and filamentous bacteria.

Troubleshooting Lagoon Systems

Wastewater in the Fall- Problems and Solutions