A distillery focused on the production of rectified spirits, denatured spirits, special denatured spirits, anhydrous alcohol and extra neutral alcohol required a water treatment system to meet their environmental sustainability goals. To recycle and reuse the effluent from the plant, the client decided to install an effluent treatment plant (ETP).
The ETP has a conventional biological treatment followed by a tertiary treatment system. The distillery planned to recycle the ETP treated water using reverse osmosis for their process and utility use such as cooling tower makeup water and bottle washing.
To ensure high quality permeate, the distillery decided to select ultrafiltration (UF) as an additional filtration step to get the required turbidity and ensures consistent product water quality suitable as feed for the downstream reverse osmosis (RO) process required for reuse. The parameters required for the RO feed water are SDI <3, Turbidity <0.2 NTU.
Since a high feed turbidity of up to 50 NTU was anticipated in the feed to the ultrafiltration system, the client decided to select PVDF-based outside-in UF membranes due to their capability to filter water with a high feed turbidity. The distillery evaluated various outside-in UF membrane options; the evaluation was based on the membrane surface area, the ability to withstand higher feed water turbidity and amount of waste generation. The system integrator finally selected Q-SEP 8012 UF membrane modules because of the following advantages they offer:
1. High membrane area of 80 m, requiring a lower number of membrane modules and footprint, resulting in capex savings for the distillery.
2. The ability to withstand feed turbidity up to 100 NTU on a continuous basis.
3. Higher product recoveries due to a lower amount of UF filtrate used for maintenance cleaning.
