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Critical emissions
Service supplied by Labiotest
In the production process associated with livestock activities, odour problems do not only affect livestock farms.
In fact, even companies involved in the production of pet food often have to deal with the difficulties of odour emissions from their plants.
Pet food may be made of animal and/or vegetal elements.
In the production of pet food made of animal elements, by-products of human food industry deriving from animals slaughtered under veterinary supervision are used. Parts of the animal that are not suitable for human consumption (e.g. heart, lungs, kidneys, livers) and what remains of the carcass (bones, blood, intestines, tendons, ligaments, etc.) are used.
Usually, only raw materials from species accepted in the human food chain, such as beef, lamb, poultry, pork, fish, rabbit and game, are used.
Considering we are specialized in the treatment of odour emissions, a historic company in southern Italy producing approximately 450,000 tons per year of pet food, both dry and wet, contacted us.
The critical odour issue they reported to us developed from a wastewater treatment plant serving their production facility.
The actual pet food production process consists of several steps that allow preparing ingredients, weighing and mixing them : the result must be a homogenous product that can undergo physical or thermal treatments, for quality improvement.
The main processes that pet food undergoes are:
Odour emissions of pet food companies are mainly due to the processing of raw materials and various stages of drying, extrusion and mixing of ingredients.
In our client’s specific case, the odour criticality was due to the wastewater treatment plant serving the plant where raw materials were processed and where to convey the washing waters coming from the slaughtering and processing departments.
In particular, the critical issue regarded sludge storage tanks. We were thus asked to convey and treat the air coming from a floater and centrifuge room.
Since the area was already enclosed, but also presented critical aspects related to the emission of contaminants, we took into consideration the treatment of exhausted air by means of a dry chemical-physical filtration technology, to reduce odours and pollutants.
After studying the situation and the analytical data provided by the customer on the effluent to be treated, our technicians drew up a customized design regarding the critical emission issue.
We then implemented a new air treatment filtration equipment consisting of a DKFil® system complete with internal demister, inverter, fan and connection piping.
The air treatment unit was sized and designed according to the flow rate of the emission to be treated and chemical and physical characteristics of the odorous molecules to be eliminated.
The chemical-physical treatment system includes:
To optimize the effluent filtration and treatment process, we included an internal demister unit.
Its function is to pre-treat the airflow through separation of the condensed phase on a coalescing filter, to safeguard the filter bed and partially remove water-soluble substances.
The condensate, separated from the flow, is collected at the bottom of the unit and discharged by means of a shut-off valve.
Using our DKFil® system, the client has seen a significant improvement in critical odour levels, as evidenced by olfactometric investigations which revealed a reduction in odour concentration of 85%.
Because of the excellent results obtained, the client is considering installing a further filtration system to serve another critical area of the purifier.