Slaughterhouse Wastewater Characterization and Treatment: An Economic and Public Health Necessity of the Meat Processing Industry in Ontario, Canada

The characteristics of the slaughterhouse effluents and current wastewater treatment practices in the province of Ontario, Canada are analyzed. Meat processing plants are found to produce large amounts of wastewater due to the slaughtering process and cleaning of their facilities. Furthermore, the composition of the wastewater varies according to the type and number of animals slaughtered and the water requirements of the process. However, the slaughterhouse wastewater usually contains high levels of organics and nutrients. Several slaughterhouses in Ontario discharge their wastewater into the municipal sewer system after primary pretreatment at the meat processing plant. Therefore, due to the high-strength characteristics of the slaughterhouse effluents, an extensive treatment for a safe discharge into the environment is required. Thus, the combination of biological processes and advanced oxidation technologies for slaughterhouse wastewater treatment is evaluated in this study. Results show that the application of combined biological and advanced oxidation processes is recommended for on-site slaughterhouse wastewater treatment.

[1]  W. P. Tritt,et al.  Materials flow and possibilities of treating liquid and solid wastes from slaughterhouses in Germany. A review , 1992 .

[2]  E Debik,et al.  Use of the Static Granular Bed Reactor (SGBR) with anaerobic sludge to treat poultry slaughterhouse wastewater and kinetic modeling. , 2009, Bioresource technology.

[3]  A. Hoekstra,et al.  The water footprint of poultry, pork and beef: A comparative study in different countries and production systems , 2013 .

[4]  G. Daigger.  Evolving Urban Water and Residuals Management Paradigms: Water Reclamation and Reuse, Decentralization, and Resource Recovery , 2009, Water environment research : a research publication of the Water Environment Federation.

[5]  E. Quiñones-Bolaños,et al.  Cost-effectiveness analysis of TOC removal from slaughterhouse wastewater using combined anaerobic-aerobic and UV/H2O2 processes. , 2014, Journal of environmental management.

[6]  M. Mehrvar,et al.  Free-Radical-Induced Degradation of Aqueous Polyethylene Oxide by UV/H2O2: Experimental Design, Reaction Mechanisms, and Kinetic Modeling , 2012 .

[7]  E. Quiñones-Bolaños,et al.  Combined anaerobic-aerobic and UV/H2O2 processes for the treatment of synthetic slaughterhouse wastewater , 2013, Journal of environmental science and health. Part A, Toxic/hazardous substances & environmental engineering.

[8]  L. Ahrné,et al.  Quality optimisation of combined osmotic dehydration and microwave assisted air drying of pineapple using constant power emission , 2012 .

[9]  C. Bustillo-Lecompte,et al.  Assessing the Performance of UV/H2O2 as a Pretreatment Process in TOC Removal of an Actual Petroleum Refinery Wastewater and Its Inhibitory Effects on Activated Sludge , 2015 .

[10]  Connie M. Borror,et al.  Response Surface Methodology: A Retrospective and Literature Survey , 2004 .

[11]  Gauri S Mittal,et al.  Treatment of wastewater from abattoirs before land application--a review. , 2006, Bioresource technology.

[12]  A. Laursen,et al.  Photolytic treatment of organic constituents and bacterial pathogens in secondary effluent of synthetic slaughterhouse wastewater , 2012 .

[13]  Ciro Fernando Bustillo-Lecompte,et al.  Slaughterhouse wastewater characteristics, treatment, and management in the meat processing industry: A review on trends and advances. , 2015, Journal of environmental management.

[14]  C. Bustillo-Lecompte,et al.  Photochemical degradation of an actual slaughterhouse wastewater by continuous UV/H2O2 photoreactor with recycle , 2016 .