A solution for onsite treatment of low flow, high BOD brewery wastewater

Brewery wastewater is higher in organic materials and suspended solids than typical residential wastewater. With craft breweries on the rise, municipal treatment facilities have begun to recognize the additional burden brewery wastewater can present.This case study details two breweries that deployed a new type of attached growth, above ground and passively aerated biological treatment technology. One was deployed as a continuous treatment system for the purposes of scaling a larger, final system. The other is a batch-mode operated system to meet pretreatment discharge standards at full scale.While this technology has been applied over the last four years in a variety of municipal and industrial treatment scenarios these are the most recent two sites to deploy and report on treatment specific to brewery wastewater. In both cases, the expected chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction was achieved as predicted by the technology provider’s proprietary model, with COD reductions of up to 90% recorded.