A mesophilic digestion of brewery wastewater in an unheated anaerobic filter

Monitoring anaerobic digestion: a 2-year brewery case study

“…There is also literature on gas quality, and in this study, methane concentration was 70% ± 9% higher than the 60-62% methane from brewery effluent reported by Van Der Merwe and Britz (1993) and Bocher et al (2008) but similar to Baloch et al (2007), 62% to 75%, and lower than Leal et al (1998), who reported 80-95% methane from brewery wastewater, suggesting that more data are needed on methane measurements.…”

“…Values greater than 90% COD removal are commonly reported in the literature when there is high solubility and therefore biodegradability (Baloch et al, 2007;Borja et al, 1994;Connaughton et al, 2006;Cronin and Lo, 1998;Gonzalez et al, 1998;Leal et al, 1998;Zheng et al, 2012). Ahn et al (2001) reported a 76% soluble fraction for brewery waste, and Goodwin et al (2001) reported 78-84% solubility from whisky distillery pot ale.…”

“…Specific water consumption of breweries ranges from 4 to 11 l water per litre of beer, with two thirds of the water being used for production and one third for cleaning processes (Fillaudeau et al, 2006). A review of brewery wastewater literature gave a chemical oxygen demand (COD) range of between 1200 and 125 000 mg/l COD (Baloch et al, 2007;Leal et al, 1998). The wide range of COD values is due to the batch production, seasonality and variety of process streams included such as brewing, malting, spent grains and other wash waters (Kato et al, 1999).…”

“…These incentives have overcome the higher investment costs, lack of experience and reputation for instability (Franklin 2001; Lettinga, 1995; Parawira , 2005). The solubility and resulting high biodegradability, together with the large variations in waste characteristics, present risks to the stability of the slower anaerobic process (Cronin and Lo, 1998;Leal et al, 1998). A recent survey of operating AD plants in the EU noted that excess acidity from shock loads was the most common cause of stability problems (Chen et al, 2008).…”

“…Offprint provided courtesy of www.icevirtuallibrary.com Author copy for personal use, not for distribution 2-13 kg COD/m 3 /d) and Leal et al (1998) (96% COD removal using an anaerobic filter at 8 kg COD/m 3 /d loading rate). Zheng et al (2012) found that increasing the OLR from 15 to 45 kg COD/m 3 /d with an EGSB increased the COD removal efficiency from 92·1% to 97·2%, possibly by improving mixing, but this was not investigated.…”