An Evolution of Water Treatment Technologies in the Food and Beverage Market: 4000 m3 per day water reuse plant and energy recovery from meat wastewater.

More and more food and beverage companies decide to use innovative technologies to increase production or optimize their production in a more sustainable way. Getting access to safe, clean and affordable water will have an increased interest for these companies to secure their production as North-America will face serious water shortages in the near future. It’s time to start thinking about how the water life time at the production site can be increased and how also on the water and wastewater side innovative technologies can be applied to reduce the risk and impact of the upcoming water crisis. A good example is the advanced water reuse and biogas generation plant of a leading European meat processor. They started 10 year ago with one slaughter line and gradually expanded with 2 slaughter lines and a rendering facility. The wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was gradually expanded with WWTP and anaerobic digestion (AD) technologies utilizing to the capacity expansion. Their latest challenges are increasing draught periods stressing the quality and quantity of their boreholes resulting in forced reducing in slaughterhouse capacity. To anticipate on this thread, similar to upcoming water shortages like in North-America, they implemented a Sewage Treatment Effluent Reuse Facility of 4000 m3 per day of certified drinking water quality for process applications, all recovered from their industrial wastewater. In addition, due to the significant energy value of their wastewater, it is turned into approx. 80 MWh/d sustainable energy per day for inhouse use via anaerobic digestion technologies and another “hidden” portion of energy conservation by the water recovery cycle. The plant is an example of treatment and technology evolution.