VIDA Awarded Project - DV026 - Nanofiltration applied to rejected water recovery in brewery industry

Submitted by Ana Fernandes on 29 July 2020

NANOWIN

Duration:

29 October 2019 / 29 October 2020

Summary:

NANOWIN is led by two engineering companies and water solutions integrators (Adiego Hermanos, Jotem Waterbehandeling) and a membranes manufacturer (NX Filtration) from Spain and The Netherlands, with the collaboration of La Zaragozana, leader in the Spanish beer industry.

The project NANOWIN aims to demonstrate the optimization of the reverse osmosis water conditioning by introducing advanced nanofiltration membranes. NANOWIN will take advantage of the high pressure in the rejected stream of reverse osmosis system. This energy potential is not used directly due to the high level of salinity. The aim of this project is to demonstrate on a representative scale the optimization of the water conditioning cycle by treating the concentrated stream from the reverse osmosis process using a newly developed low-pressure hollow fibre nanofiltration (NF) membranes. Due to the unique tubular form of the NF membranes, the pressurized effluent can be directly treated through low-pressure membranes, so no additional pre-treatment and feed pump are required. The project will demonstrate in an operational environment (brewery) both water re-use and resource recovery by reducing the final rejected waste stream and consequently, it will allow the reduction of water footprint of breweries.

The project has three milestones: design, construction and installation and test. The first one will define the prototype and how it will be implanted in the brewery. Construction and installation will be done following the instructions created before. Finally, different tests will be done in order to know how far it is possible to go in different conditions of operation.

The first KPI defined is related with the amount of rejected wáter could be saved. It is expected to save around 50%, but the KPI will be achieved if it is saved 55%. Once water is saved, it is needed to know where it could be re-used, at this point another KPI is defined as quality indicator. If water has conductivity lower than 150 uS/cm it could be used in the production process, otherwise, it could be used in cleaning process or even more as raw water. Taking into account that the brewery has 5 reverse osmosis, the ratio water/beer is close to 5 litres of water to each 1 litre of beer produced. To measure the impact in the whole process, another KPI has been defined, which evaluates the decrease of usage of water per litre of beer produced. NANOWIN expects to reduce it from 5 litre to 4 litre per liter of produced beer.

Overall, this project focuses on finding the way of optimising the use of water by using an innovative solution in the brewery industry, where water is the main component of the product.

Partners:

Adiego Hermanoswww.adiego.com

NXFiltrationwww.nxfiltration.com

Jotem Waterbehandelingwww.jotem.nl

Learn more: www.vidaproject.eu I info [at] vidaproject.eu (      ) I Follow us: @h2020vida

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, under Grant Agreement nº 777795.

Disclaimer: The content of this document represents the view of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility: it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-size Enterprises (EASME). The European Commission and the Agency do not accept responsibility for the use that may be made of the information it contains.

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