Breweries wastewater

Europe brews more than 400 million hectoliters (hL) of beer and is second only to China. According to the Brewers of Europe, Eu­ropean brewers spend more than $1.5 billion on utility services such as water and energy. Large breweries have their own wastewater treatment plants. The energy contained in brewery wastewater is then usually reclaimed in the form of biogas. Hexem Systems now make biogas production from brewery wastewater even easier and more flexible.

Current treatment technologies use expensive aeration, outdated anaerobic sludge digestion and sludge incinera­tion to remove wastewater contaminants. If energy rich contami­nants were removed early the process, aeration and sludge treatment could be reduced by 80% or eliminated entirely. Furthermore, if energy and nutrients were reclaimed at the treatment plant's entry, most of the resources car­ried by the wastewater could recovered.

This contrasts current state-of-the-art technology where resources are reclaimed only after expensive aeration. Hexem has developed a technology that reclaims energy re­sources at the beginning of the wastewater treatment process while treating the water.