Can a brewery (5-10BBL) opperate on a septic system?

[Zoob]

As the titel states: Can a 5-10BBL brewery/brewpub opperate on a septic system?
I am looking for peoples real world experience and advice on this subject. I have never gave it much thought but can it iven be done? I am looking at a property to open up but just found out it is septic and initally I have ruled this piece of land out due to septic.
Thoughts and advice are welcome.
thanks
Craig

[banjo]

Waste water system

Jason Fox, Brewmaster at Custom Brewcrafters in Honeoye, NY can probably help you out. Here is his powerpoint on the waste water pretreatment.

http://www.conserve-greatlakes.com/Resources/Documents/WasteWaterPretreatmentSmBreweries.pdf

Weeping Radish has their own self contained system. http://www.weepingradish.com/

[Bainbridge]

Can it be done? Maybe. Should you? Ehhhhhh probably more trouble than it's worth.

Solutions off the top of my head:

Collect waste water and runoff in a big plastic tank, treat it before dumping or have a pump truck come dispose of it.

Install a fancy landscaping treatment solution involving holding ponds and willow trees and marshlands and whatnot. If your county will let you and you have the space.

A brewery in my county (800bbls or so annual production) collects all their runoff and dumps it out on a field that they own and are specifically permitted to dump on. So there's that.

Bottom Line: anything you do is more trouble than sewer. Is the location worth it?

[mashpaddled]

You also need to take a look at whether your state/county/municipality will let you operate that way. It could be very costly to plan out your brewery only to not be able to receive licenses until you spend money ripping up the floor to put in a different waste water system.

[maydayBiotech]

we are having similar problems. we actually bought a septic system, but were still releasing over 4000 BOD/ month! HELP US FIX THIS SYSTEM! i heard about aspergillus oryzae being able to reduce beer BOD by 98%. If we replace a septic tank's use of E. coli and other gut flora with aspergillus do you guys think it'll begin to function as designed?

the main problem with using a septic system for beer water pre-treatment: it's designed to exploit natural processes in order to degrade HUMAN NITROGENOUS WASTE. It's not designed to remove organic molecules that are as hard to remove as alcohol and vinegar, and likely not designed to handle drastic pH fluctuations thats typical of beer industrial run off.

• BOD5 analysis from the water company found that we had a BOD rating of over 4000, which translates to almost $500/month in fines.
• We bought a septic tank , in conjunction with Biogreen germs to pre-treat our run off.


• Our run off contains Beer (of course), acidic cleaners, and basic compounds used as a neutralizer. Ph is monitored and kept between 6-9.


• We add biogreen that we bought to a 55 gal tank full of beer, which I have termed tank A (because it is not a chamber in the pretreatment system)…. After allowing the germs to eat this beer, we dump all 55 gal into chamber 1 of our system. Its important to note that when pure biogreen is observed under a microscope I find tiny bacteria-looking microbes without a nucleus, but when Tank A and chamber 2 are observed I see large nucleated fungi.

• After chamber 1, where all pH issues are dealt with and biogreen from tank A is added, we pump our run off into a septic system that has 2 chambers (chambers 2 &3). Chamber 2 pumps air to mix up organic molecules, and it had plastic polygons floating in it for germs to colonize (to facilitate eating up BOD causing organic molecules). Chamber 3 has slits in the bottom of it to recycle water into chamber 2 (so the germs on the media can eat more organic molecules), it also separates buoyant and dense layers by sitting still. The water company samples the 3rd chamber for BOD analysis. This system is designed for human waste. Chamber 3 seems to be growing mold on top of it (buoyant layer), and the polygonal media in chamber 2 doesn’t seem to have germ growth.


• Some suggestions online and from my college professors include: removing moldy top layer and dense bottom layer from chamber 3 or filtering out solids, adding aspergillus oryzae, saving beer run off to sell to hog farmers, flowing our sewage into the septic tank, and using methanogens to create biogas to be resold or used by the brewery. What would you suggest? I think: add koji cultures to chamber 2 and filter chamber 3.

thanks for your help,
Johnny Wimpee

[Bainbridge]

An interesting thought. What temperatures are you looking at in there? My experience using koji was in some sake projects, but as I recall aspergillus oryzae's main ability is kicking out amylase enzymes to break down the starch in the rice. So it seems to me that your mash will have already done much or all of that for you. But koji's fairly cheap, why not go buy a few containers and report back?

[maydayBiotech]

Koji may be the silver bullet for beer water pretreatment

An interesting thought. What temperatures are you looking at in there? My experience using koji was in some sake projects, but as I recall aspergillus oryzae's main ability is kicking out amylase enzymes to break down the starch in the rice. So it seems to me that your mash will have already done much or all of that for you. But koji's fairly cheap, why not go buy a few containers and report back?

Yea, I'm desperate for anything that will make our septic system work. The reason I suggest A. oryzae is based on the function of our septic tank. Our tank is designed to use gut flora/ E. Coli to digest feces.... im thinking "right germ for the right substrate" for a silver bullet cure to get this thing up to par.

my professor (environmental micro) said to try scooping out the sludgy top layer and removing the bottom layer of sediments in our tank like a separatory funnel.

so what if we tried a blend of these techniques- got the right germ to work like a regular old septic system, and filtered out the scummy layers of the water tank? what type of filter would be optimum for water-beer pretreatment? membrane/ carbon?

thanks for the reply. I will look into koji mold some more and report back.

-J. Wimpee

[Starcat]

Effluent type and system design

I am going to throw in some experience that is similar but not exactly the same thing for your consideration. All the points made above by others are to be noted.
Also I think there have been some former threads on this subject that are worth looking into.
I had to deal with a small commercial style laundry on a resort property in a remote location. Luckily, it was the only effluent on that system which will make matters more clean cut. IN this case as in Brewery based on what we are putting down the drains here, what you will end up with will be in a class of its own and you do not want to mix it with other types of waste especially bathroom or kitchen. That in itself will be asking for big trouble possibly. Also mixing of effluents can get you into some real problems with odors coming off your system that are very difficult to deal with.
My situation was essentially a Grey water effluent, also requiring a catch tank that must be pumped out regular. This particular soup could not really support any bio activity.
As indicated it may...... can be done but your drainfield consideration must be very well calculated and definitely oversized for what you are expecting to deal with.
Its a matter for very careful research and planning because once you are running you don't want to go down. As thus, your system has to be very capable of dealing with the reality of things without unexpected major problems stemming from a cut corner design.