Canadian petfood manufacturer Champion Petfoods is working to reduce the smell from its plant in Morinville, Alberta, after local residents complained about the odors from the plant, the St. Albert Gazette reported.
According to president, Frank Burdzy, the company’s October air quality tests suggested the plant was operating at 50 odor units per cubic meter, a 15% to 20% reduction from the level in April. David Spink, an air quality consultant who specializes in industrial odors, says odor units are standardized measures of smell, where one unit is not considered to be harmful because it is undetectable to half of the population and barely noticeable to the other half.
Burdzy says the smell problems began around 2007, when the company added more meat ingredients into its products. A US$500,000 plasma injection system was installed in 2010 to fix the problem, but did not because the plasma systems can only work after particle separation with cyclone or venturi scrubber. A plan to install Venturi scrubbers to spin and soak the particles out of the air is being delayed until spring 2012 after a consultant found additional changes that needed to be made.
The petfood manufacturer has since lowered the heat in its dryers, improved airflow in the plant and finalized plans for new stacks to be installed in spring, in an effort to reduce the smell to a maximum of five odor units.
“There’s going to be some sense of odor from time to time, but the key thing is we want to remove the offensive nature of it,” Burdzy says.
