Abattoir effluent is strong, fat-rich and variable: a kill day and a wash-down day are two different wastewaters arriving at the same inlet. The media has to suit the stage it is in, not the industry it came from.
Also searched as: slaughterhouse wastewater treatment media · abattoir effluent mbbr · meat processing wastewater carrier media · anaerobic media food processing effluent
Most abattoir plants are built in the same order, and the media choice follows the stage rather than the trade:
| Screening and fat separation | No media. Fat that reaches a biofilm reactor coats the carriers and the diffusers, and no media selection recovers from that |
| Anaerobic or anoxic first stage | Large protected volume, coarse carrier or suspended ball media. The duty is hydrolysis and solids capture as much as it is biological |
| Aerobic moving bed stage | MBBR carriers, fluidised by the aeration grid, doing BOD and ammonia removal |
| Settling or flotation before discharge | Lamella settling media to keep the footprint small on a site with no land |
Our published K-series runs from over 800 to over 1000 m²/m³ of specific surface with void fractions of 85–90 %, a fill band of 15–67 % of reactor volume, biofilm development of 3–15 days, organic oxidation of 2000–15000 g/m³·d and nitrification of 400–1200 gN/m³·d, at 5–60 °C with a published service life beyond 15 years.
For a strong, fat-bearing effluent the coarse end of the range is the safer choice: high void and large protected chambers resist clogging and keep the bed fluidising when the load spikes. The finer, higher-surface grades are the right answer only when the pre-treatment is reliable and the duty is nitrification rather than carbon removal.
Where the plant has no aeration but does have mixing, suspended ball media (Φ55–150 mm, relative density 0.92, published counts of about 350 pieces/m³ at 150 mm through 2,000 at 80 mm) is an alternative that is easier to retain and cheaper per cubic metre.
If the discharge is to a municipal sewer or a river, the final solids removal is often lamella media in a small footprint: Φ25–90 mm cells, 62–236 m²/m³ specific surface, 93–97 % porosity, 60° installation, 4–5 m stack, loaded at 3–5 t/m²·h, with published capacity of 3–5× a horizontal-flow basin.
Product pages: MBBR carriers · suspended ball media · tube settler media · disc aerators · industries: all applications.
A coarse, high-void MBBR carrier in the aerobic stage, with a properly sized fat separator ahead of it. Strong fat-bearing effluent clogs fine, high-surface carriers from the outside in, and the resulting failure looks like a media problem when it is a pre-treatment problem.
The carriers work in a mechanically mixed anoxic or anaerobic tank, but the duty there is hydrolysis and solids capture more than nitrification, so a coarse carrier or suspended ball media with a large protected volume is usually the better fit.
Only if the discharge consent requires it or the site has no land for a conventional clarifier. Published lamella capacity is 3-5 times a horizontal-flow basin in the same footprint, which is why it appears in plants built inside an existing building line.
Flow (including wash-down peaks), the fat and solids load, the existing pre-treatment, the discharge consent and the tank volumes available. With those we specify the stage, the grade and the fill fraction rather than selling a product.
We specify per stage - anaerobic, aerobic, settling - instead of quoting one media for the whole plant.
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