Poultry enterprise saving water

Ovivo has saved the state of Queensland millions of litres of water each day by building an advanced water treatment plant (AWTP) which is claimed to be the first of its kind globally and the first of its scale.

The recently completed facility was built for Inghams Enterprises at its Murarrie processing plant in Brisbane. It currently treats the equivalent of two Olympic-size swimming pools of process water per day and, when it reaches its full potential, it will treat close to three.

The design of the plant enables more than 70% of all the process water to be transformed into drinking water of an internationally recognised and approved quality.

The water, however, is not used for drinking. It is re-used in combination with town water to supply increasing water demands. This will mean a saving of 3.15 million litres of water each day for the city of Brisbane by the time the plant reaches full capacity in 2011.

Project and process engineer for the job Peter Fraser said that the job was “one of a kind”.

“It is the first of its kind and it is saving Brisbane around 2.1 m litres of water a day running at well below its design capacity,” he said.

The AWTP will guarantee Inghams a water supply at almost the same expense as using town water. The securing of a guaranteed water supply will enable the company to expand its processing facilities without relocating or having to purchase water from private sources.

The plant has now been running for almost a year and it has been so successful that Inghams have just approved the construction of a second advanced water treatment facility in Victoria.