Anaerobic and Aerobic Treatment System Upgrade for Fruit Juice Beverage Industry with MicroClear MBR® Membrane

This paper demonstrates a case study of how effectively MicroClear® membranes are in treating the anaerobic effluent from fruit juice beverage industry. Our requirement is to meet the POTW maximum monthly discharge compliance concentration limit of less than 150 mg/L BOD and TSS (corresponds to a maximum daily mass loading limit of less than 150 lb/d BOD and TSS) to allow the facility to increase its production capacity by 50%.The bulk of the organic loads from the plant expansion was pretreated by the new 250,000 gallon high-rate Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor. The project team evaluated a couple aerobic treatment polishing options for the plant expansion and concluded that converting one of the existing activated sludge tanks to a MBR system was the best option. The MBR was chosen because; (a) it provides consistent, superior effluent quality that exceeds the discharge limit within the constrained footprint, (b) has a compact design with a very small footprint, (c) meets the project budget (d) highly automated operation with low operator attention, (e) modularity design allows for future expansion, (f) less sludge production, and (g) potential effluent direct discharge to nearby Wills Creek in the future.Side by side performance of the existing secondary clarifier and the MBR showed that the MBR produced excellent effluent quality with BOD and TSS of less than 5/2 mg/L, on a consistent basis, when compared to the existing clarifier effluent with BOD and TSS of less than 100 mg/L.