Guatambu water treatment installation reaffirms Aurora Coops’ sustainability ambitions
"The installation of these stations has marked a milestone in the cooperative’s history, showcasing technological advancements and the adoption of new concepts that are expected to be copied in future installations", says Aurora Coop’s Sustainability Coordinator, Luciana Frassetto de Campos Breda. This is the fourth project that Aurora has developed with Marel, which also installed a system at the Xaxim (SC) facility.
In addition to pollution control, the implementation of the new treatment stations ensures sustainable development, combining economically significant activities for the region with environmental preservation and social promotion. "Stricter discharge parameters than those required by law, the use of imported technology, automation, greenhouse gas reduction, and effluent reuse at the station itself reinforce important values of Aurora Coop in these projects, such as ethics, quality, trust, and sustainability", says Luciana Breda.
Thanks to this initiative, in August 2023, Aurora Coop received the 24th Fritz Müller Award in the Pollution Control category. Supported by the state government of Santa Catarina through the Institute of the Environment (IMA), this award recognizes companies and organizations that undertake environmental projects in the state.
The partnership between Aurora Coop and Marel began in 2019, with very successful results. Years later, Aurora Coop decided to expand the production capacity of the Guatambu poultry processing facility. This expansion aimed to provide purified water of the highest quality to the environment and the local community. It is not surprising that Aurora Coop chose Marel’s water treatment system once again for this endeavor.
According to the Sustainability Coordinator, this decision was influenced by the robustness of Marel’s equipment, the applied technologies, the expertise of the technical team, and the positive experiences obtained previously. The project was developed in collaboration between the Engineering teams of Aurora Coop and Marel, with Marel’s technicians supervising the assembly and startup phases. As a benchmark for the poultry processing industry in Latin America, the Guatambu industrial plant is set to initiateits operations in the first quarter of 2024.
The history of the partnership between Aurora Coop and Marel began when the cooperative chose to install a water treatment system at the pork processing plant of Frigorífico Aurora in Chapecó in 2019. “During the expansion of the Chapecó processing plant, we were looking for a supplier of a wastewater treatment solution that could support our growth plans. We found that with Marel, and we also immediately understood that the performance would be far superior to our existing system,” says Luciana Frassetto de Campos Breda.
Proper wastewater treatment is a growing concern for meat and poultry processing companies. This is because such processing requires a significant amount of water that needs to be disposed of. Wastewater contains blood, fat, excrement, tissue fragments, and other organic substances. If discharged into the environment without treatment, this could contaminate surface and groundwater resources.
Respecting these environmental needs and being committed to sustainability, Marel develops innovative technologies to help food processors comply with environmental regulations and contribute to ecological preservation.
With the adoption of Marel’s system, Aurora Coop pre-treats the effluents from the red lines (blood, oils, fats, and solid and liquid process waste) of the Chapecó plant in coagulation, flocculation, and flotation (DAF) processes, removing fats and other substances. This pre-treated water is combined with effluent from the green lines (manure, urine, and liquid effluents) and sewage water, and then treated in an activated sludge biological system. After the disinfection process, the purified clean water is safe to be released into the environment.
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