Pumping it all away
Until recently waste food products from food industries was collected by pig farmers and used for animal feed. Sometimes the waste went to landfill.
Now, as a result of legislation following the UK's BSE an foot and mouth outbreaks, any food waste that contains meat cannot be fed to pigs or other animal, nor is landfill now an option, both on cost and on environmental grounds.
The starting situation
Landfeeds Environmental, a specialist waste disposal company operating in the centre of Ireland has found a solution to the problem of disposal. They collect waste products from a number of food industries, blend and treat them and then inject them into the soil. The mix inevitably varies and may contain products such as butter, flour, pastry dough, pizza dough, meat waste, vegetable waste - and even spent grain from the brewing industry.
The solution
Landfeeds Environmental contacted seepex looking for a unit that would reslurrify this waste with liquid effluent so that the whole could be injected into soil. They tried various types of mixer but could not find a unit that could handle the highly viscous elements and be able to remix them into a slurry suitable for injection into the ground. seepex have many years' experience in reslurrifying high viscosity, non-flow products given that some handle slurry with a dry solids content of up to 45% - without adding liquid - it is perhaps not surprising that the pump chosen by seepex for this application proved highly successful. Before the trial was complete, Landfeeds had decided to purchase.
At the Landfeeds' site the waste is loaded into a hopper above the pump, while at the same time another seepex pump meters in liquid effluent at a controlled rate in order to obtain the correct consistency of the final product. The pump mixes, reslurrifies and transports the product into a mobile soil injection unit. In this pump the open hopper is fitted with an integral bridge breaker designed to ensure the product is evenly distributed and assisted into the spaces within the auger feed screw.
The benefit
The company are so happy with the operation of the unit that they have bought a second seepex pump for a similar application, and this is due for installation shortly.
