Simmons Foods Inc.’s Southwest City, Missouri, operation uses innovative wastewater treatment and recycling to reduce its overall use of the resource.
As part of the 2020 U.S. Poultry & Egg Association’s Clean Water Awards, Simmons Foods’ operation in Southwest City was recognized with an honorable mention with distinction award in the full treatment category. The facility last won the award in the category in 2015.
The full treatment category covers plants treating wastewater in accordance with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits allowing the facilities to discharge into a receiving stream or final land application system. To be eligible, a facility must have a minimum of two years of no significant non-compliances or notices of violations or any other type of enforcement action. Judging is based upon training, unique processes utilized for treatment, community outreach, wildlife management, water conservation and general environmental stewardship.
Wastewater treatment
The Southwest City Complex treats an average flow of 1.931 million gallons of wastewater per day. The operation processes 450,000 birds at an average weight of 4.5 pounds, 466 tons of protein by-products per day and manufactures a dairy feed ingredient called Pro-CAL.
Rather than the traditional dissolved air flotation (DAF) units, the Simmons facility uses suspended air flotation (SAF) units it derived from two DAF units it retrofitted in 2017. These units incorporate the use of an anionic surfactant to separate solids from water at higher efficiency than a DAF unit.
From left: Coleson Rakestraw, Kashoua Thor, Simmons Foods. (Paul Bredwell)
It also uses a new oxygen system, also implemented in 2017, called Blue-in-Green. The system works by saturating liquid oxygen with water. This system helps to provide higher levels of oxygen that is demanded to treat nitrogen and the biochemical oxygen demand of aerobic biological organisms that break down organic material present in water. The Blue-in-Green system helped boost the efficiency of the operation, according to Simmons Foods.
Water reuse
Simmons Foods says it’s a leader in water used per bird. According to statistics on poultry plants provided by Agri Stats Inc., the operation ranks 15 out 127 plants in terms of water used per bird at 4.26 gallons per bird. That’s about one gallon per bird less than the industry average.
The company also recycles water for use around the plant. The entire Southwest City wastewater operation uses recycled water, totaling at 31.7 million gallons of recycled water used per year. It also uses recycled water around the plant for non-contact applications and outside the plant for truck washing.
