Water Reclaim System

Background

Mid-sized and large craft breweries face a major obstacle to meeting the growing demand for their beers: high discharge fees for the waste generated by the brewing process. To avoid expensively discharging brewery wastes like hops, yeast and fatty sediment, breweries can use treatment techniques to reuse the water, but cost and complexity have deterred most brewers. Until now. Recently we provided a major U.S. brewery with a solution to recover and reuse 90 million gallons of process water per year.

Approach

As our client encountered more aggressive sustainability goals and rising discharge fees, we identified ways to capture water, treat it and repurpose it for non-product use. We identified high quality sources of recovery, including water from clean-in-place steps and packaging processes, before designing required treatment systems such as RO filtration and UV sterilization. Reused water was sent to existing repurposed tanks in the facility to avoid new tank and building costs. The recovered water was processed and purified to a process water standard.

Results

The project met sustainability goals and provided re-purposed water for use in non-product applications. With the support of our client, we successfully designed, fabricated, and delivered the solution to recover and reuse 90 million gallons of process water per year. We also adapted to additional client needs by incorporating controls that would integrate with the facility’s communication network and benefit the customer both with enhanced equipment operation, as well as reduced operational costs. After delivery, we provided effective equipment installation and commissioning at site, fulfilling the contract, and more importantly, satisfying the client.