Context

The project consists of developing a pilot system for capturing gases emitted by the pig slaughterhouse wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and separating the CO2 for reuse in pig stunning before slaughter. Thus, it aims to: reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the slaughterhouse treatment plant; reduce consumption of CO2 that the slaughterhouse has to acquire for the stunning phase; and transfer the technology for application in the entire slaughter industry and in other types of industries that use WWTPs.
The actions that this project is based on are: 1) development of a pilot system to capture the gases emitted in the reactor of the slaughterhouse’s WWTP; 2) determination of the composition of the captured gases; 3) testing of various techniques to recover the CO2 present in the gases emitted by the WWTP in order to determine the optimal method; 4) Determination of the maximum production of recoverable CO2 and analysis to assess its validity for use in the stunning of pigs; 5) experiments on the stunning of pigs with CO2 recovered from the WWTP, discarding any possible sanitary incompatibilities of this CO2 with the animals, and analysis of the quality of the meat obtained in order to determine possible differences with respect to the meat obtained using normal commercial CO2.
Dissemination and knowledge transfer actions will also be undertaken throughout the course of the project.