Portuguese Brewery Saves 72 Million Liters of Water Annually with New Technology

Sociedade Central de Cervejas e Bebidas (SCC), a brewery in Vialonga near Lisbon, Portugal, has significantly reduced water usage by improving operating performance and reliability with help from GE’s (USA) advanced membranes and water chemical technology. The site reused wastewater to its cooling towers, which enabled it to reduce its yearly water discharge by 72 million liters and reduce its annual fresh water consumption by the same amount. It also increased production performance by 40 percent in the tertiary treatment.

GE has awarded SCC an ecomagination award to recognise the company for its noteworthy reductions in fresh water consumption and wastewater discharge. GE’s ecomagination award recognises the achievements of industrial users for striking a positive balance between today’s environmental, industrial and sustainability challenges. It is given to the top GE customers in environmental and economic performance.

“At SCC we strive to continuously improve the environmental impact of our brands and business; empower the people and the communities where we operate; and positively impact the role of beer in society. Brewing beer is water-intensive, and we are committed to increase sustainability and use less water, which is a precious resource,” said Ronald den Elzen, CEO of Sociedade Central de Cervejas e Bebidas, part of the HEINEKEN Group. “We are honored that GE has recognised us for an ecomagination award.”

SCC has some groundwater available at the site, but it was not enough to meet the needs of the brewery. The other option was to use extremely expensive city water. In addition, Portugal is at a high risk of water scarcity over the next decades, so SCC turned to GE to help develop a solution using GE’s advanced water technology.

By using GE’s low-fouling reverse osmosis membranes and advanced chemistry technology, SCC was able to improve tertiary water treatment performance, reducing shutdowns by five times, also contributing to cost savings.

The GE ecomagination award was presented today to SCC during a ceremony to celebrate the achievement.

“In recognition of SCC’s sustainability initiative and its commitment to reuse water and reduce both its fresh water consumption and wastewater discharge, we are pleased to present Sociedade Central de Cervejas e Bebidas, part of the HEINEKEN Group, with the GE ecomagination award,” said Ralph Hadley, regional executive Europe and Russia, GE Water & Process & Technologies. “Reusing water can go a long way to prevent water scarcity. By using GE’s water treatment membranes, chemistry technologies and technical expertise, we can help meet current and future water shortage challenges.”

The ecomagination award is part of GE’s ecomagination commitment, which focuses on developing technologies and solutions to meet tough environmental challenges like water scarcity. Through vision and creative innovation, GE is helping create a prosperous, better tomorrow.

This was not the first environment-related project developed together by GE and SCC. GE’s technologies contributed to other sustainable initiatives in the past years:

- The cooling tower monitoring and control system TrueSenseTM and GE’s advanced chemistry reduced make-up water consumption in the cooling towers by controlling concentration cycles at higher rates.

- The pasteurisation process was improved with a significant reduction of water and steam consumption.