Wastewater Managment / Deal with the City

[Trickster]

Right now I am in the tedious process of opening my own brewery in the Northwest. I have been through the city project planning committee meeting to start my own brewery. No one had any issues except the waste water division, which was kind of expected. I am going to have to pay a sewer cap fee of somewhere between $10K and $30K, which is dependent upon how well I treat my water. I would like to treat my water as well as I can but starting out I may have to limit what I am doing to treat my water.

Here is how I plan on treating my water. Anything that goes to the floor from the brewhouse will be filtered with a bag filter. Here is where my first question arises; does anyone have any recommendations on what size micron I should use? My floor drains will have coarse strainers in them and then the water will pass through a sand, grit trap interceptor before heading to the holding tank (probably 2000 gallons). All chemical solutions from cleaning and rinsing vessels and bottler will be sent to an intermediate bulk container for neutralization prior to heading to the floor and finally to the holding tank.

Does anyone out there use this method and how does it work for you? Do I have to worry about using chlorinated products with this holding tank because they will contain oxidizers (although really low ppm)?

The city waste water division is also asking me to estimate the strength of the waste water (BOD, TSS, Total Phosphorus, and Nitrogen). I can estimate about where the pH will be before hitting the sewer but everything mentioned I have no idea how to estimate. We are going to open doing about 800 barrels a year and when we reach capacity we will be doing around 1400 barrels a year, mostly ales. If anyone can shed some light on how to estimate these numbers please let me know.

The city is forcing me to add in a sample port for them to come and test my holding tank water at any given point. The city also wants me to estimate to total monthly discharge of solid wastes (garbage) as well, we will only have a tasting room that will serve out of kegs with our production plant. Is there a way to estimate the combined weight of the contents of the grit trap, strainers, bag filters, and other trash accumulated based on amount of beer produced?

Also, if anyone has some manufactures of some of the equipment listed in the northwest that they have been happy with let me know.

Thanks,

Matt Morrow
Matt.morrow86@yahoo.com

[liammckenna]

Matt;

Here's a starting point (PDF document). Your BOD/COD will not really be influence by your filtration. If you have a compressor, you should sparge liquid waste with compressed air going into the holding tank (helps lower BOD). Volumes - estimate 8:1 is a reasonable start point (8 volumes water for every volume beer produced) especially on your small scale. Easy to track this number based on water meter readings and recorded production numbers.

Don't worry about low levels of chlorine. When your local municipality comes to sample, insist on a 12 or 24 hour composite sample (done with an auto sampler) instead of just a 'grab' sample. 'Grab samples' are notoriously unreflective of your true effluent situation.

Pax.

Liam

sorry here's attachment:

[Trickster]

Should I be using an aeration stone with the compressed air to help dissolve it?

Also, is there somewhere you could send me for an autosampler?

Cheers,

Matt Morrow

[Iron Goat]

We're at the same point with the city and they're asking for effluent estimates for BOD, etc. It'd be a great help if I could also get a copy of that PDF.

Thanks,
Paul
paul@irongoatbrewing.com

[liammckenna]

You should use a stone or scintered disk for aeration.

The municipality should provide the sampler...they come in with the unit, drop a line down your sample port and come back 24 hours later to pick up the unit. You can buy one from Fisher Scientific (and many other places, I'm sure) for a few grand if you want.

Added the attachment above.

Pax.

Liam