Reducing Water and Natural Gas

In 2018, the JBS Food Canada Brooks, AB, team moved away from using thermal interventions in the chad cabinet on the facility’s harvest floor. Instead, the facility now utilizes peracetic acid (PAA) chemical intervention. In light of the PAA recycle system’s successful application across JBS USA Fed Beef facilities, the system was implemented at Brooks as well. Since installment, the facility has reduced its water usage by more than 400,000 gallons per day, equaling 98 million gallons annually or $196,800 per year.

Additionally, prior to project implementation, steam generated from the facility’s boilers (which utilize natural gas) was used to heat the chad cabinet water from 120°F to 200°F. As the water is now recycled in the PAA system, it loses only about 5 percent of its heat during the process and therefore does not require as much steam to return to the required temperature. This has enabled the Brooks facility to remove one boiler from service and reduce natural gas usage by 75,000 GJ per year or $160,250 per year. With Canadian households utilizing an average of 110 GJ per year, these savings are equivalent to the usage of about 960 homes.

Furthermore, chemical use has decreased by 60 percent since installation of the system, resulting in a reduction of $1.2 million spent on chemical each year.