𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆 𝗡𝗼. 7 tests new innovations for water, energy and material recovery in the beverage industry.
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY and AQUABIO LIMITED collaborate with the Glenmorangie whiskey distillery in Tain, and Alpheus, the current operator of the treatment site, to conduct pilot studies. The innovative approaches should bolster resource recovery from the current anaerobic membrane bioreactor effluents.
The distillery requires high-quality water for internal cleaning processes for which it currently uses freshwater. A reverse osmosis unit is implemented after the anaerobic membrane bioreactor as an additional treatment step. Distillery wastewater can be cleaned to meet the quality requirements and reused internally for cleaning purposes.
For efficient nutrients recovery from the distillery wastewater, a system combining a pre-precipitation step for struvite crystallisation and a stripping column for ammonia recovery is investigated. The recovered products will find potential application as fertilisers on the local barley fields.
Finally, waste heat is recovered from the bioreactor effluent (35°C to 40°C) and utilised in the ammonia stripping process.
