September 26, 2013 — The Texas-based company presented its innovations in water conservation at the Virginia Industrial and Environmental Conference this month. With Chesapeake Bay operations based out of Reedville, Va., Omega’s crews harvest menhaden to produce fish oil and fishmeal products.
Bill Purcell, the company’s environmental manager, explained how the plant has reconfigured its process to reuse both seawater and the water that comes from the processed fish to propel fish from the fishing vessels or to wash down the plant floor.
Instead of using ground water (which could soon require a permit in Virginia), crews pump filtered seawater into the fishing vessels, which helps keep the fish cold and can be used to convey them into the plant for processing.
The plant also reuses the water that is squeezed off the fish when they are turned into oil and fishmeal products. The Reedville plant uses a waste heat evaporator — the same kind that’s used to make orange juice concentrate — to extract about 300,000 gallons of water per day.
That water can be reused to wash down the plant floor, bail fish from the boats and operate several large machines. The measures save the company from using more than 18 million gallons of water per year that would have otherwise come from the ground.