Belgian company will turn animal blood from slaughterhouses into drinking water
Getty ImagesYusuf Ozkan / The Hague
A Belgian company will convert animal blood accumulated after slaughter in slaughterhouses into drinking water.
Veos, a company that produces animal feed and protein from the by-products of slaughter, aims to save 45 million liters of groundwater annually by converting animal blood.
The Belgian company, located in the city of Zwevezel, on the Dutch border, announced that it will establish a 2 million-euro treatment plant to convert animal blood into drinking water.
According to Belgian media, this will be a world first.
According to the statement made by the CEO of the company, Robert Slee, to the Belgian media, thanks to the treatment plant, 150 thousand liters of drinking water will be obtained daily from the animal blood in the slaughterhouses.
In the treatment plant, the animal blood accumulated after slaughter will be thickened and dried under vacuum. In that process, the water vapor separated from the blood will be condensed until it becomes water again.
This water will be treated at the new facility and can be used in the production process.
Switching from animal blood to drinking water will allow Veos to use 40 percent less groundwater.
This means that around 45 million liters of groundwater are saved per year.
Veos CEO Slee stated that they needed a lot of water during the production process, especially to clean the tanks where animal blood is stored, and said that they only used the groundwater they pumped so far.
The Belgian manager emphasized that they started looking for an alternative to consolidate their sustainability goals, protect the groundwater level, then pump less water and increase production, so they decided to turn animal blood into drinking water.
The Belgian company, which also produces raw materials for the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry, also invests in solar panels and heat exchangers within the scope of sustainable energy.
