Water Treatment Solutions for the Food and Beverage Industry

An important element of food safety is ensuring hygiene in the entire production chain. As an essential part of that, the water treatment must fulfil the hygienic requirements of the plant operator and the lawmakers. In PurBev the essential requirements are embraced. Four focal points distinguish the concept:

1. The minimising of microbial risks by consistent application of hygienic construction principles and suitable selection of materials and material quality.
2. Protection against contamination from outside due to an enclosed process management, a high degree of automation.
3. Secure cleansing and disinfection ensured by CIP and SIP enabled components and plant design.
4. A complete monitoring is ensured by suitable instrumentation, trend analyses and tracking of the relevant process data.

A comprehensive quality management system over the entire lifetime of the project, from engineering and purchasing of hygiene-conform materials and components to realisation up to installation, commissioning and on-going service ensures the systematic implementation of the PurBev concept. The result is high product safety and plant availability, economic efficiency in running operations and low maintenance and upkeep costs.

BiopROtector^®: Membrane protection against biofouling

Membrane processes enable the recovery of process water from organically loaded condensates, vapours and waste water. This requires an appropriate pre-treatment. BiopROtector builds an effective barrier against micro-organisms and thus prevents biofouling of ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes.

Biofouling results in increased energy consumption due to loss of pressure and lower production times due to greater cleaning frequencies and a shorter module lifetime because of intensive cleaning measures. Conventional measures to control biofouling are cost-intensive and often require the use of aggressive chemicals. According to a simple but very effective operating principle, the BiopROtector technology from Veolia removes from the water specific components that form the breeding ground for the growth of micro-organisms. Thus in downstream membrane modules biofouling is substantially reduced. The process requires no added chemicals and enables a significant decrease in consumption of water and energy.