Covered anaerobic ponds

16 December 2016
Focus area: Sustainability
Program stream: Waste
Anaerobic ponds are widely used in the meat industry as the first stage of secondary treatment of abattoir wastewater. They are popular because they have a high BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) and COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) removal efficiency of around 90%, with a reasonably sized footprint and low operational costs; however, they have a couple of issues:
  • odour emissions; and
  • the biogas produced contains a high percentage of methane (CH4) which is a powerful greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) 21 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Supporting documents

Most recent reports

Previous in this focus area 22 May 2017 Covered anaerobic lagoons meat industry applications Next in this focus area 30 November 2017 Crust management for optimal anaerobic digestion performance at meat processing facilities