Situation

Brewery effluent treatment is a crucial part of wastewater treatment in the food and beverage industry. Water is not only a core component in production, but also absolutely necessary to clean all process steps. Depending on the size of the brewery, between 3.5 and 6 litres of water are needed to produce one litre of beer.

A brewery in the UK produces up to 10,000 hectolitres of beer a year. On average, this produces about 20 m³ of wastewater per day. To be able to discharge this directly into the environment, the owners wanted a solution for wastewater treatment. Since the ClearFox® team already has a lot of experience with the brewery effluent treatment, they were able to offer a fast and reliable solution.

Problem

The challenge in this project was the irregular wastewater production. This mainly occurs when cleaning the vats, pans, and storage tanks. The ClearFox® team therefore had the task of balancing the inflow peaks.

Solution

For this project, the ClearFox® team planned a wastewater treatment plant with FBBR technology in concrete tanks. The ClearFox® engineers had the tanks produced on site – this met the customer’s wishes. The total of five tanks serves as buffer tank, FBBR reactor and lamella clarifier. They are suitable for below-ground installation and are thus particularly space-saving.

Before the wastewater flows into the buffer tank, a compact screw screen filters out coarse solids such as husks or spent grains. The buffer tank is important first and foremost to compensate for inflow peaks. After that, the wastewater flows continuously into the fixed-bed reactor. Since wastewater from breweries can be treated biologically very well, the FBBR process is the ideal solution for this project. The wastewater has a COD of around 5,000 mg/l and a BOD₅ of around 2,500 mg/l. The biological treatment achieves a COD of 150 mg/l and a BOD₅ of 40 mg/l, making the treated wastewater ideal for direct discharge.