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Food & Beverage Industry Wastewater Treatment System

Ecologix Environmental Systems offers a comprehensive selection of wastewater equipment and technologies that solve the challenges that fats, proteins, and carbohydrates pose to the food and beverage industry. Whether your process requires pretreatment, membrane filtration, disinfection, or odor removal, Ecologix has the expertise and treatment technologies to meet and exceed your compliance standards.

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Food and beverage wastewater challenges

Food processing uses water as an ingredient, cleaning source, transport medium for raw materials, and sanitizing agent. Effective process design is specific to each plant and can help manage water costs, reuse opportunities, and environmental compliance. When regulated constituents need to be reduced to permitted discharge levels, pretreatment is often the most direct approach. A dissolved air flotation system can significantly reduce suspended solids, oil and grease, and BOD.

Market segments served

  • Cooking plants
  • Rendering plants
  • Processing plants
  • Bottling plants
  • Boiler water treatment
  • Cooling towers
  • Flavors and additives
  • Bakeries

Influent characteristics

Typical measured contaminant levels as wastewater leaves the plant:

  • COD: 1,000–5,000 mg/L
  • BOD: 500–3,000 mg/L
  • TSS: 200–5,000 mg/L
  • TP: 5–150 mg/L
  • TKN: 50–1,000 mg/L
  • FOG: 100–1,500 mg/L

Required effluent characteristics

Typical limits before treated wastewater is discharged into public water supplies:

  • COD: ≤ 1,000 mg/L
  • BOD: ≤ 250 mg/L
  • TSS: ≤ 250 mg/L
  • TP: ≤ 20 mg/L
  • TKN: ≤ 50 mg/L
  • FOG: ≤ 100 mg/L

Food and beverage wastewater treatment

Optimum treatment solutions

Pretreatment is necessary before commercial food and beverage wastewater is discharged to a municipal sewer, as municipal plants may be unable to remove typical contaminant densities. Dissolved air flotation and biological treatment can remove solids, BOD, fat, oil, and grease.

A DAF system can reduce FOG by up to 99% and TSS by up to 97%. Flocculant addition and pH adjustment for FOG removal can be automated with the Ecologix Enhanced Dissolved Air Flotation System.

Food and beverage wastewater treatment process flow diagram

DAF process description

  1. A DAF system injects microscopic air bubbles into the DAF tank.
  2. The bubbles attach to insoluble pollutant materials and float them to the surface.
  3. Heavier materials may require flocculants, which attract suspended particles and air to form clusters that float to the pretreatment vessel surface.
  4. Surface contaminants, or sludge, are scraped from the water and removed from the treatment process.
  5. Clean water exits at the bottom of the DAF vessel and can be discharged to the sewer.
Food and beverage wastewater treatment process using a DAF system

If your commercial food or beverage plant is struggling to meet wastewater discharge requirements, call 1-678-514-2100 or contact us to discuss an onsite package pretreatment plant.