Tour the South Wastewater Facility
 

Our main customer is a poultry processing/rendering  plant. About 95% of our incoming flow comes from that source. The remaining domestic influent flows that we receive are from a small town and filter wash water from the South Water plant. We usually receive around 3.5 million gallons of wastewater each day. Due to the high BOD. loading we receive from the poultry processing plant we have to feed Magnesium Hydroxide at the influent to add alkalinity in order to maintain our pH levels and to provide sufficient alkalinity for nitrification (it takes roughly 7.5 pounds of alkalinity for the 'bugs' to remove 1 pound of ammonia as nitrogen). Treating poultry wastewater was a whole new ball game to us. We have encountered many different operational problems and solved them along the way. Poultry and domestic wastewater are not the same!! This web site was set up to give you a small peek into the large world of a wastewater treatment plant operator and hopefully to host a place on the web where other operators can discuss issues and help one another with their experiences.
 
 

This is where it all begins....The influent flows through the head works where it is measured. We use the "Parshall flume" and an electronic flow device to determine the incoming flow rate. Heavy debris like sticks, coke cans and anything else that is large and untreatable is captured by the manual bar screens. A typical week, currently, consists of a high flow during the week and minimal flow when the poultry industry shuts down for the weekend. This is one of the things that is different from a domestic wastewater plant. A domestic wastewater influent flow usually picks up on the weekend when everyone is home. Two advantages to our current scenario are consistent flow rate and BOD loading (strength or concentration).
 

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