Water/Waste Processing - Feb 2012
Green Energy Unlocks Profit Potential for Dairy Industry Many sections of the dairy industry are pouring potential profit down the drain by overlooking the green energy potential of wastewater The industry has tended to treat its wastewater as a cost and place where production process mistakes are flushed If there were spills or if a production product was out of specification it would be flushed down the drain into the wastewater thats where the mistakes go says wastewater and green energy specialist Mike Bambridge managing director of CST Wastewater Solutions Such outdated approaches have resulted in bigger and bigger lagoons that are both groundwater hazards and big consumers of expensive energy and fossil fuel because of the large energy intensive aeration systems needed to treat their contents They also create a lot of sludge and disposal problems In fact there lies a huge often hidden potential in using wastewater as a source of renewable energy rather than seeing it as a cost says Bambridge whose company represents the clean water and green energy technologies of Global Water Engineering GWE has built successfully more than 250 plants producing biogas as part of the industrial effluent clean up system of which more than 75 were supplied with subsequent biogas utilization systems for clients worldwide Many of the latest installations use advanced technologies including anaerobic pre treatment of water and aerobic polishing to enhance water discharge purities while converting waste to methane to be burned to power boiler and hot water systems for example or to power generators and permanently replace fossil fuels On average the removal efficiency of GWEs anaerobic wastewater treatment installations is as high as 90 95 percent easily bringing the organic load down to regulatory discharge standards for most types of wastewater GWE CEO Jean Pierre Ombregt says the concept of using wastewater to create green energy is much more widely applicable than often realized Any factory with a biological waste stream or wastewater with high COD Chemical Oxygen Demand can easily use this model to generate energy particularly the dairy industry for which GWE technologies such 20 February 2012 Water Waste Processing www waterwaste com as its Flotamet system combined with its proprietary Dissolved Biogas Flotator DBF are specifically designed to take the high levels of fats and oils prevalent in dairy factory effluents says Ombregt So far most industries have mainly been focusing on treating their effluent to meet local
You must have JavaScript enabled to view digital editions.
