Processing seafood in an environmentally friendly way

India Ocean Tuna, an international seafood exporter, has introduced a new wastewater treatment to its Seychelles manufacturing plant to reduce its environmental impact.

Located in the Indian Ocean, the plant has installed a Global Water & Energy (GWE) aerobic and anaerobic digestion plant to process wastewater and potentially provide biogas.

Thai Union invested about US$9 million into the construction of the new wastewater treatment as part of its commitment towards the 115-island archipelago of the western Indian Ocean.

“With world seafood production now topping 170 million tons — both from fisheries and aquaculture — there is obviously great scope globally for GWE technologies such as those adopted by Indian Ocean Tuna to deliver a more sustainable environmental outcome. This plant sets global benchmarks for environmental outcomes and commercial sustainability,” said GWE.

The new plant will help remove over 95% of organic contaminants from the wastewater using treatment processes including GWE’s ANAMIX anaerobic waste digester to achieve outstanding discharge qualities and convert a mixture of wastewater and sludge into biogas. This can be turned into methane and later used for energy production or fuel for electric power generators, or to replace fossil fuels in steam boilers and heaters on the production site, therefore minimising the company’s environmental impact.

Extracting biogas (primarily methane) from the organic waste removed will allow the fish processing plant to save more than 2000 kg/d of fuel oil worth about US$1000/d.

Application of an anaerobic digester such as ANAMIX and mechanical dewatering with a screw press also helps lower disposal costs and lower landfill requirements for solid waste.

Michael Bambridge, Managing Director of CST Wastewater Solutions, which represents GWE in Australasia, said, “Biogas-producing green energy plants such as this can help pay for themselves. So there is a strong business profitability case to support companies wishing to act in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Image credit: GWE.