For many food processors, getting rid of process wastewater is a daily operational burden that never quite goes away. Land application through center pivot irrigation has long been a go-to method, but anyone who has run pivots on process water knows the reality: nozzles clog, equipment breaks down, crews spend hours in the field, and the whole system is only as good as its last repair.
A Perdue Farms pork processing facility in Iowa decided there was a better way. In the video below, we walk through how the plant moved away from its pivots and onto Evaporation King’s enhanced evaporation technology.
Watch the installation video
▶ Watch: Perdue Farms – Pork Processing Water
The Problem with Pivots
Center pivots were designed to irrigate crops with clean water, not to dispose of processing wastewater. When they’re pressed into that role, the weak points show up fast:
- Clogging. Solids, fats and other constituents in process water foul nozzles and lines, reducing distribution and forcing frequent cleanouts.
- High maintenance. Moving parts spread across acres of field mean constant inspection, repair and downtime.
- Dependence on land and season. Pivots need suitable ground and conditions to apply water, which limits when and how much a plant can discharge.
For the Iowa facility, the maintenance load had become a real cost — in labor, in parts, and in the uncertainty of whether the system would be ready when the plant needed it.
The SWITCH: Three Gladiator 120 Systems
Rather than keep patching the pivots, the plant installed three Gladiator 120 enhanced evaporation systems from Evaporation King.
The Gladiator works on a simple idea: make the water easy for nature to evaporate. Its high-speed rotary atomization breaks process water into very fine droplets. That huge increase in surface area lets wind, temperature and humidity do the work, driving evaporation without the energy-hungry heating that thermal evaporators depend on.
Smarter Operation with Automated Weather Droplet Control
Evaporation performance depends on the weather, so the systems don’t run blind. Each installation includes automated weather monitoring and control, which adjusts operation to current conditions. The system runs when conditions favor evaporation and backs off when they don’t, keeping operation efficient without someone having to babysit it. An optional remote monitoring feature lets operators check on the system from anywhere.
What the Plant Gained
- Lower maintenance compared with keeping a pivot network running on process water
- Lower operating costs, since evaporation is driven by ambient conditions rather than thermal energy
- More predictable wastewater management with automated, weather-aware control
- A smaller operational footprint than field-scale land application
Is Your Facility Fighting the Same Battle?
If your team spends more time fixing pivots than running your plant, Perdue Farms’ experience is worth a look. Enhanced evaporation can reduce wastewater volumes with far less hands-on effort, and the Gladiator line scales across a range of flow rates.
Talk to Evaporation King about whether enhanced evaporation fits your process water.
