A REVIEW OF DIFFERENT CASE STUDIES ON BREWERY WASTE WATER (EFFLUENT) TREATMENT

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to find out the available treatment processes for brewery
wastewater and to indicate the most common and effective treatment process. The quality and
the quantity of a brewery effluent fluctuate significantly depending on various different
processes that take place within the brewery. Biological process is the mostly used treatment
process for breweries. Physical and chemical treatment processes can apply as pre-treatment
before biological process. Most common biological treatment processes are: Aerobic
Sequencing Batch Reactor; Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket Reactors (UASBR) &
Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR).Aerobic granular sludge technology is applied in waste water
treatment for most importantly to remove nutrients (COD, P and N).Anaerobic process is less
efficient in removing P and N, but it has good COD removal capability.COD removal
efficiency is about 80% by using anaerobic process.MBRprocess is reliable and simple in
operation. It requires low operation cost, high degree of automation but shows stable effluent
quality. A combined treatment of UASB and MBR was done by Dong et al., (2010) and it is
found thatthe average removal rate of COD is up to 96.05%.Nitrogen removal efficiency is
up to 91.97%.Butit indicated that sludge concentration was higher; sludge settling was not
well, and also the floc size was very small, so it accelerated membrane fouling; increased
membrane filtration pressure and flux reduce as well cost. So anaerobic treatment is
preferable in terms of cost, but it needs a following aerobic treatment process to meet the
effluent quality.