Wastewater management for the drinks industry

Wastewater management for the drinks industry

The Company
A major, UK based drinks processing company.

The Problem
The beverage industry has large water use due to the high quality water required to create standardised drinks nationwide. This, in turn, creates a large volume of water which cannot be discharged into sewers or the local water course.

With daily process flows of 500 m3, the company was required to use a tankering service to transport the wastewater away from site. The tankering costs incurred by the company were both high and unnecessary as water can be treated on site.

The Solution
MSE Systems’ team of engineers designed and installed a complete turnkey wastewater treatment system which treated wastewater on site enabling it to be safely discharged into a ground soakaway.

We installed two Mitsubishi hollow fibre membrane type SADF500 Membrane Bio Reactor modules. Working on mixed liquor concentrations of around 12 mg/l, they deliver excellent treatment results providing water which is clean enough to be discharged to a ground soakaway.

The install included:

• Balance tank to equalise flow and load

• Non-conformity/calamity tank to take high strength discharges and hold them. These are then bled through the treatment plant over a longer time period to prevent shock loads to the system

• Aeration tank to introduce high levels of oxygen to maintain biological life

• Anoxic tank to stop aeration and nitrify the water to a desirable level of alkalinity

• Treated water tank to store cleaned water. The recycled and cleaned water are used to back flush the system to keep the membranes clean and working at their highest efficiencies

• Excess bio sludge DecaPress dewatering centrifuge to dewater the sludge. This reduces volume and produces a stackable cake that can be more easily removed from site

The MSE Systems’ designed and installed water management industry has completely removed the need for wastewater tankering for the client. Since the installation of the solution, the only waste product now leaving site is a stackable cake which can be removed quickly and cost effectively.

As with most complete plants delivered by MSE Systems, this installation included a system control and automation package. This allows the client to monitor the efficiency of the wastewater treatment system beyond the initial install.