ARECA’s FrisaRendering Plant  -  Palin, Guatemala

 

The facility is a rendering plant, utilizing a limited waste water system.  The basic design has a cooling tower, with the water then passing through a grease trap and then into an aeration tower.  The water is then discharged into a series of three small lagoons, with a retention time of that was stated at 2 days.  The total system seems to have 110,000gallons in the tanks and lagoons…and the flow was said to vary between 6,857and 11,428 gallons per day.  This would give the system a retention time of between 10 and 15 days.  At any rate, the proposed treatment would have been the same, and the issue was if we would be able to lower the COD without needing to expand the retention time or not.  As such, we treated the system as follows:

ACF-32 Gallons                                  First Week        Weeks2-3-4     Every Week

Aerator 1  /     10 m3                                   2                        1                    1/2

Lagoon 1  /   120 m3                                   2                        1                    1/2

Lagoon 2  /   120 m3                                   1                       1/2                  1/2

Lagoon 3  /   120 m3                                  1                       1/2                  1/2

Total              370 m3                                  6                         3                      2

At the start oftreatment, the COD and BOD were

Data              Influent            Effluent                                  x

                                                April1              June 6

COD                6,290                1,420                  363

BOD                5,700                1,140                  164

The local regulations had targeted a 50% reduction by 2014, and an additional reduction of 50% by2024 for each facility in the River Basin. Based on the first 5 weeks of treatment, AquaClean was able to essential meet the 2024 goals without any further capital investment, while eliminating odor and significantly reducing flies. Based on increasing the retention time, by increasing the lagoon depths by constructing a simple block wall one meter high, we anticipate being able to reduce effluent discharge below targets of 100 COD and 50 BOD.

                Lagoon One                               Lagoon Two                            Lagoon Three