TEXT: MONIQUE VAN LOON
Turning waste water into drinking water
’Water is our most The world is drying out and there is a worldwide shortage of water. ‘We are seeing water scarcity increase. Worldwide, only 6-8 percent of the earth’s surface is fresh water. We have to be careful of that. We purify waste water and turn it into drinking water’, says Emiel Koster of Nijhuis Saur Industries. ‘Water is an interesting field with many challenges’, he says passionately.
Total treatment and biogasplant Poland.
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‘In conversations with poultry slaughterhouses, I explain the extent of their pollution to show the importance of water purification. The degree of pollution is a technical explanation, but that is something the slaughterhouse people understand’, Emiel explains. Before water can be discharged into the surface water, water purification is necessary. Each person produces about 60 grams of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) per day. BOD is a measure of pollution. A slaughterhouse can easily process 20,000 broilers per hour for 16 hours a day. This results in 20,000 x 16 hours x 10 litres per broiler = 3200 m³ of waste water every day. This waste water contains about 2.2 grams of BOD per litre, totalling 7,040 kg of BOD per day. This is the same as a city of 117,300 people. ‘When you present these overwhelming pollution figures to technical directors and owners of poultry processing plants, it opens their eyes and they have an idea of what it means if they don’t treat their waste water. That’s usually how projects start.’ Expansion thanks to waste water treatment Nijhuis Saur Industries builds plants with filter systems, chemical and biological processes. ‘I visit many companies. We create suitable solutions everywhere. That is the challenge. For example, a slaughterhouse in Poland wanted to expand. That was not possible, because there was not enough water available. The customer had a choice between relocating, opening a second site, and treating and reusing waste water. We built an installation that turns waste water into certified drinking water in a number of steps. The slaughterhouse uses it for its process. A sustainable solution.’ Each step in the purification process produces waste such
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