High TDS in Brewery Effluent

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I work in Brewery Effluent in Nigeria and total dissolved solids (TDS) have been a major challenge (1600 ppm).

I introduced adsorption, it was able to remove between 20-30%, I still have about 1200 ppm TDS in the effluent.

I am required to bring it down to 500 ppm at the cheapest cost possible.

The daily ETP discharge is 470 cubic meter. The focus is on TDS as every other parameter met the consent requirement for discharge into the river.

What is the cheapest and most efficient way to reduce the TDS from the brewery effulent?

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19 Answers

  1. Please consider your process, desludge is the most key. The capacity of the preliminary process, does process designed to handle a such volume of TDS. If not please create a balancing dam, for the influent. Before water flow into the process must be settled into balancing dam in order to control the nutrients. Also compare inflow and outflow TDS analysis. You may find that problem is within the process. 

     

    The cheapest methods is to construct balancing dam.

     

    Thank you,

    Mangena P

    1 Comment

  2. You may find some information in this similar forum:

    https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_low-cost_methods_are_available_to_remove_TDS_in_wastewater

    The suggestion to differentiate between organic and inorganic TDS is spot on. You did not say if you have a biological wastewater treatment process in your description, as this will take out the organic fraction. RO and evaporation of reject is very energy intensive unless you have a lot of excess land and can use an evaporative pond.

     

  4. 07/23/2017

    Congratulations on your progress to date, in bringing down brewery effluents TDS.

    • A Major US National Bakery in the NYC, North East had similar  industrial engineering problems with their management of the industrial levels of by products, particularly yeasts in baking breads, cakes, cookies, 24 x 7.
    • Problem-How to economically manage, contain & efficiently remediate,  get rid of their tons of yeast by products, after they steam cleaned their industrial stainless-steel mixing vats at the end of each shift?
    • A licensed Industrial Engineer who had emigrated from Armenia, recommended that they install proven Reclamation Stainless Steel Hardware,
    • which they would then heat up to 200+ degrees C, & then pump the diversified yeast laden bakery left over pasty products onto this very hot stainless-steel plate, totally eliminating, evaporating the H-2-O present within the liquids as stem leaving a dry by product at the bottom of the stainless-steel plates.
    • This was an industrial solution that they had used for years in Armenia & MEA as a means of capturing, saving a valuable, clean, protein rich dry livestock animal foods for hogs, cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, catfish, carp, trout etc.
    •  Perhaps you could implement the same process for both the breweries & industrial bakeries, food preparation industries.
    • Please let me know your thoughts & comments with this proven wholistic nutrition reclamation  recommendations, methods, procedures.
    • Regards Gerard JC La Tournerie, Pres/CEO Wexford Systems, LLC.,
    • WEXFORD2020@GMAIL.COM
    • www.wexfordsystemsllc.com;
    • I am always available for paid consulting engagements

    1 Comment

    1. Dear Gerard, solution is proven and good. No need to heat up to 200 deg....Under relative vacuum, the excess solvent could be evaporated in a semi-discountinuous batch MSF using just waste heat stream @ lower temps (Always available whereas boilers or kettles are)
      Regards

  5. Hello Similade, although you have explained your problem very well, you have not yet disclosed the identity of TDS, which you wish to reduce or remove. Thus first please analyse to identify if the same is inorganic or organic. If organic, it can be degraded to remove the same. If inorganic, then it can either be coagulated or removed using RO. Ion exchaneg only replaces it with something else. So the success of your proposed method lies in your identifying the TDS. Regards, Dr. Modak

  6. Actually there is very old Russian technology" hard water pass through magnetic field, which do not change its ppm/ tds but make it softer for some time and by osmosis, irrigation can be done. I myself experimented and got good result. If u go to Internet and work out on water softning through magnetic device, u will get reply. It is very common in Australia. It works like MRI ( medical device). Please work it and also share with me so that we can also get benefitted. 

    1 Comment

  7. Brewery waste waters mainly consist of two streams: residual substances from production. Yeast, fermentable sugar or kieselguhr, for example, can be recycled as valuable substances into the production process once solid and liquid components have been separated.

    This reduces costs and boosts the yield.In brewery industry, the discharged waste is highly organic in nature with high COD. It also contains easily biodegradable soluble starch, sugars, ethanol and volatile fatty acids. The waste generally is composed of paper, glass, plastics, oils, cardboard, wood, biological sludge, green residues and other industrial solid wastes.

    Other than this, surplus yeast and spent grains are generated as by products. Our  Brewery Effluent Treatment Plant can operate in extremely restricted spaces and requires less maintenance and operational cost.

    The second main stream of brewery waste water comes from the cleaning of fermentation and storage tanks as well as vat and bottle rinsing. Decanters have proved to be extremely efficient for removing these residues and cleaning agents thereby making a specific contribution to environmental protection and to reducing disposal costs.

    Decanter compared with sedimentation under gravity, It also makes sense to use a decanter after the anaerobic or aerobic treatment of the production waste water in the works’ waste water treatment plant. Compared with sedimentation under gravity, the decanter exerts a force on the solids particle that is four thousand times higher, resulting in much faster separation.

    The sludge removed by the scroll is dewatered and compacted; the smaller volume of solids makes disposal easier and less expensive.

    1 Comment

  8. Brewery effluent is usually very well treatable and with the high organic loads, the SBR technology is absolutely reliable and should give you TDS values well below your target of 500 mg/l. But for that you need good floc forming for final settling and for this purpose you should check and correct your pH, which should be somewhere between 7,0 and 8,2 in your reactor.

    All other technologies are (too) expensive and need much monitoring and corrective measures.

    1 Comment

  10. Only way to reduce TDS is RO or DM. In your case you can use RO and recover maximim of water for reuse and by using evaporator you can evaporate rest of water making your unit ZLD unit.

  12. Cross flow membrane bioreactor for anaerobic conversion rates and retention of biomass and solids..May b useful less for small craft breweries.

    Filter bags,membrane filtration,separators,settling and sedimentation,flocculation .Of course perhaps,and use of electrical current t seperate solids economically

  14. Similade -- please contact me directly. Our company has a microbial enhancer that is 100% organic  and massively stimulates bacteria that then consume rapidly TDS. It is a solution and very easily added to your effluent. We are open to discussion. We do have an agent in Nigeria and a new office in Accra, Ghana. Clean water is our business no matter where we find it anywhere in the world. Clean water and biological solutions are the emerging way of the future.

    pettman@soleco-technology.com

    Hugh.

  15. after your process have do you have a granular activated carbon filter?  We use these ALL the time to drop to TSS in the final product water but we have a treatment process upfront of course such as: traditional coagulation, flocculation, settling (usually through settling tubes), followed by a multi-media filter, followed by a GAC filter and disinfection and the water we produce meets Canadian regulations which are very strict.  There are other technologies such as upflow clarifiers through a resin bead bed followed by filtration via a multi-media filter.  Then of course there is electro-coagulation (which is slowly gaining popularity in Canada), dissolved air floatation (DAF) which is AWESOME for suspended solids removal (usually a coagulant is required in conjunction with a detention tank with a DAF unit), plus numerous other options.  Please feel free to contact me as each water body I have ever treated is unique and they each require special tweaking to obtain the desired outcome. 

    Kurt Rasmussen, P.Eng.

    SaskWater

    Specialist Engineer, Engineering Support & Research

     

    200 – 111 Fairford St E

    MOOSE JAW, SK  S6H 1C8

    Cell:      1-306-630-5648

    Fax:      1-306-694-3207

    kurt.rasmussen@saskwater.com

    www.saskwater.com

  16. Dear Similade,

    the cheapest way are the long Time used coagulant flocculant iron sulfate (by- product of iron industry) or aluminum sulfate. In resident cases I have been using extremely low doses of poly-aluminum, which makes a bigger flock. 

    Now there are new technologies on the market, which propose to give you a green label like http://www.organicabiotech.com/  this particularly important for all companies which work in the sector of bottling drinks, as they are major water consumers and interested to assure a good relationship with the government,in order to keep access to water in time of climate change and scarcity.

    sludge should be dehydrated and burned in a modern waste incinerator, as nobody knows what happens to polymers once exposed to nature.

    with kind regards

    Thomas 

     

  17. With TDS your choices are to look for a coagulant if the TDS is associated with DOC (and that is probably what adsorption has removed); otherwise you are probably looking at a membrane system.

    Anaerobic digestion, as mentioned below, may help, but only of the TDS is associated with organic material, and the anaerobic digestion may release further TDS back into the system, depending upon the system and operation being used.

    1 Comment

  18. Hi Similade, what are the species contributing to your TDS? Do you also have a high BOD? Regards Raoul   

    2 Comments

    1. OK. Perhaps some more information on the moieties making up TDS would be required. Some metals can be precipitated by pH adjustments, but this is not the case with Na or K. If you have dissolved organics you may need to look at a biological system. There are some systems that use aerobic bacteria on curtains down which the effluent runs. This process can be quite compact and cheap to run. Let me know if you need more details. Regards Raoul 

       

  19. Hi Similade, I'm not sure about relative costs of removing TDS but if it consists largely of organic matter, you could consider anaerobic digestion. Although maybe not the lowest cost to install and operate, you will get methane-rich biogas that can be used as a fuel to offset the cost.

    1 Comment

    1. hank you Mike, the ornanic load is not a challenge, in fact there is a good anaerobic gidestion system in place and the ETP generates a considerable volume of methane for firing a plant.