How Are Food & Beverage Manufacturers Solving Their Water Treatment Challenges?

Water management in the food and beverage sector presents unique challenges, from maintaining high-purity process water to managing complex wastewater streams. As production demands evolve and environmental regulations tighten, manufacturers must balance traditional treatment technologies with innovative digital solutions to ensure both compliance and efficiency.

Like many other industrial sectors, food and beverage manufacturers must ensure compliance through two key areas: maintaining a sustainable water supply for production and managing effluent waste to minimise environmental impact. Whilst managing supply normally involves a relatively straightforward process of determining the required volume and quality of water, managing waste means navigating a number of more difficult problems.

Key Challenges in F&B Water Management

The food and beverage industry is unusual in being characterised by frequent changes in product type and volume at a given site. Whilst most factories in other sectors will produce the same product, at the same rate, for a period of months, business needs in the food and beverages sector will often dictate changes in output. With these variations come attendant variations in wastewater characteristics and volume. Such frequent changes in wastewater characteristics create two distinct problems.

First, the Environment Agency permits issued for wastewater discharge activities allow companies to discharge a specified volume and composition of water to the surrounding catchment. If product output volume suddenly changes, these volumes could be exceeded.

Second, changes to product type in the manufacturing line will alter the chemical composition of wastewater output. If the nature of the water to be treated is significantly changed, this could prevent existing treatment measures from effectively removing contaminants.

As well as these industry-specific challenges, the food and beverage sector also faces the same kinds of issues common across other industrial applications. With space on site at a premium, firms can struggle to turn over valuable production capacity to water treatment facilities. Likewise, the imperative to avoid disruption to the production process can dissuade site managers from implementing new treatment systems which might interrupt manufacturing output.

Despite these challenges, manufacturers can now make use of an increasing variety of solutions to reduce the impact of management difficulties, which can also present opportunities for reducing costs and reusing waste.

Modern Solutions for Water Management

Despite these challenges, manufacturers can now make use of an increasing variety of solutions to reduce the impact of management difficulties, whilst simultaneously presenting opportunities for reducing costs and reusing waste.

Traditional Treatment Technologies

Food and beverage manufacturers rely on several proven technologies to ensure water quality and compliance:

• Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems for high-purity process water
• Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) for removing suspended solids and fats
• Moving Bed Biofilm Reactors (MBBR) for biological treatment
• UV disinfection systems for microbiological control
• Ion exchange for water softening and demineralisation
  
  

Digital Innovation & Smart Monitoring

• Monitor water quality parameters 24/7
• Provide early warning of potential issues
• Optimise chemical dosing
• Generate detailed compliance reports
• Enable remote system management

Case Study

The Challenge:

An international beverage manufacturer that produces over 20,000 bottles and 36,000 cans per hour required a new process water and wastewater system. The system needed to treat incoming mains water to a level that was suitable for its process needs, meet local discharge standards without the need for month-to-month alterations and fit within a confined space.

The Solution:

Following an updated consultation, design and review process with the client, we recommended the PurBev® Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant in combination with a Filtraflo filter for treatment of process water. Similarly, an IDRAFLOT® dissolved air flotation system was chosen for wastewater treatment, in conjunction with an AnoxKaldnes™ moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR).

The Results:

To further minimise manual monitoring requirements, the client is considering installing our Hubgrade online monitoring system, which will allow them to remotely monitor operations even when away from the plant. There are only a small number of staff employed by the client, so this feature will allow the team to automatically capture important information, which would otherwise be missed.

We are at the forefront of innovation in each of these areas, offering a number of flexible and efficient bespoke solutions for food and beverage businesses. Whether companies would benefit most from Hubgrade digital monitoring, intelligent system design and custom phased commissioning plans to minimise impacts on production, or temporary mobile water treatment options to maintain uninterrupted output, we are able to provide the right solutions across a broad spectrum of technology and design services.

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