SOLUTIONS BY INDUSTRY

Breweries, wineries and other beverage producers are often found outside of built-up areas. There is not enough space in a large city for vineyards, furthermore some landscape would lose its romantic atmosphere if rows of grapes would be surrounded by factories and skyscrapers. The success of small villages that depend on the tourism is certainly due to the excellent wine in their region. Despite all the wonderful romanticism and love for untouched landscapes, there is a problem. Breweries and wine producers located far from the beaten path are rarely connected to public sewage systems. Wastewater from the brewing or wine pressing process must be disposed of in a decentralized way. The good news: There is a solution to this very problem. Most wastewater from the beverage industry is biodegradable. As one of the leading specialists for decentralized and semi-centralized wastewater treatment using biological methods, ATB WATER supports many breweries, wineries, distilleries and other beverage producers in the treatment of their wastewater. We use several different approaches including the SBR process (Sequencing Batch Reactor) for sequential biological cleaning.

In our practical report Beverage industries you can get a first impression of of our various application possibilities in the field of sewage technology. We are convinced that we will find the right solution for your requirements as well.

The small chapel of St. Leonhard and the associated spring almost vanish between the towers of green bottle crates in the middle of a small woods near the Bavarian s Church of St. Stefan; due to the increasing demand and to the ever higher towers of crates the capacity here, however, has for some time already been no longer sufficient. Still the new production site with many times the production capacity is already just about to be occupied - in the vicinity of the old operation, to the chapel and, naturally to the source of the holy water. Here, in future, both administration and the complete production are accommodated in a single building: the filling plant, the automatic cleaning facility for the glass bottles and, naturally, the treatment of the wastewater produced - using a multi-stage AQUAMAX^® XL wastewater treatment plant. We were there as the plant was installed, tested and taken into service.

The processing of the water at the foot of the Baverian Alps has, since time immemorial, been a part of the everyday handicraft of Leonhardsquelle, but the treatment of the wastewater was new territory for the technicians!

As a result a competent partner was sought. The execution by the construction firm thus went to its neighbour the bwu Unterholzner GmbH; it was well-known that this firm, as marketing partner of the ATB, could help further with the AQUAMAX^®.      
Within the framework of the wastewater engineering project development and the process of attaining authorisation under water law the local engineer office of Ingenieurebüro Stief was then tasked to find a solution to the wastewater problem. Initially, within the first phase of the project, a stocktaking had to be carried out. Ultimately, there are three different wastewater flows produced in operations over the whole year which have to be handled by the wastewater treatment plant which had to be conceived:

• The faecal wastewater of employees in the building (administration) and the wastewater from the social buildings of the operation - altogether 8 PT.
• 3 m³ wastewater per day from the back-washing of the deferrisation facility: The spring water has a high iron content and has to be fed through an ion exchanger before processing: The iron flakes produced are removed by back-washing the ion exchanger and are trapped in a trough-shaped settling tank. These deposited iron residues are then disposed of separately.
• The main wastewater flow is provided by the bottle and crate washing plant. With this ca 144 m³ of water are yielded per day, the peak value is 6 m³ per hour. The wastewater produced from this has a very strongly varying pH value and must, beforehand, be brought into a moderate zone in the course of buffering.

The operational safety of the complete plant was and is one of the most important aspects with the conception of the plant. In order to meet these demands some additional components, which were far above the normal standard scope of delivery of the AQUAMAX® XL plant had, naturally, to be integrated into the plant. For one, an online pH metering system was integrated into the buffer tank in order to regulate the neutralisation; precisely because the pH value has a very great influence with regards to operational safety and the stability of the biomass. This pH measurement and naturally the additional agitators had still to be integrated into the control box In addition the operator required a visualisation of the whole plant in order better to be able to observe the complete process of the wastewater treatment. This was realised by software specially written for this application case. The construction of the wastewater treatment plant was started parallel to the move of the operation. 

Commissioning finally took place in November 2003.