The concentrations of pollutants in various wastewater
streams from slaughterhouses or rendering
plants are summarised in Table 1. Despite the substantial
variation in the results, these data provide a
useful guideline for wastewater-treatment-system
design and act as a starting point for waste minimisation.
Whereas the combined slaughterhouse
wastewater can vary substantially with respect to
COD and TP content, the nitrogen content is
usually more invariable.
Tritt and Schuchardt (1992) present the most
recent and comprehensive summary of the physicochemical
characteristics of many different waste
streams from German slaughterhouses, but care is
needed in using these figures. German slaughterhouses
have no rendering plant, since this processing
must, by law, be performed in a separate off-site
facility (Tritt & Schuchardt, 1992). The data of Stebor
et al. (1990) are derived from a very large,
integrated US beef slaughterhouse and show excellent
similarities with Australian data. For
sheep-processing plants, the presence of a fellmong