Wastewater Recycling in Dairy Industry using Membrane Processes

Wastewater Recycling in Dairy Industry using Membrane Processes

Paper in proceedings outside WoS and Scopus

The dairy industry generates a significant amount of wastewater, presenting a potential opportunity for recycling that could mitigate environmental impact and provide economic benefits for dairies. Membrane processes are suitable technologies for wastewater recycling. Numerous studies have been conducted on this topic. However, they are usually dealing with application on a specific separate stream of wastewater such as flushing water or vapour condensate. In this contribution, we focus on the recycling of the mixture of all effluents from a dairy plant, which is typically highly polluted and more common in the practice. The main goal of this paper is to experimentally assess the efficiency of reverse osmosis in treating real dairy wastewater. The experimental apparatus consists of pre-treatment filtration, ultrafiltration and two-stage reverse osmosis. The COD removal efficiency exceeded 99.8%, and the final COD concentration was approximately 80 mg/L. These results demonstrate that the reverse osmosis is a suitable method for the recycling of this type of wastewater. However, heavy fouling occurred during pre-treatment and ultrafiltration, which limits its practical application. Future research will build on these findings and will focus on the fouling problem and long-term operation

The dairy industry generates a significant amount of wastewater, presenting a potential opportunity for recycling that could mitigate environmental impact and provide economic benefits for dairies. Membrane processes are suitable technologies for wastewater recycling. Numerous studies have been conducted on this topic. However, they are usually dealing with application on a specific separate stream of wastewater such as flushing water or vapour condensate. In this contribution, we focus on the recycling of the mixture of all effluents from a dairy plant, which is typically highly polluted and more common in the practice. The main goal of this paper is to experimentally assess the efficiency of reverse osmosis in treating real dairy wastewater. The experimental apparatus consists of pre-treatment filtration, ultrafiltration and two-stage reverse osmosis. The COD removal efficiency exceeded 99.8%, and the final COD concentration was approximately 80 mg/L. These results demonstrate that the reverse osmosis is a suitable method for the recycling of this type of wastewater. However, heavy fouling occurred during pre-treatment and ultrafiltration, which limits its practical application. Future research will build on these findings and will focus on the fouling problem and long-term operation

sustainability, reverse osmosis, water reuse, fouling

sustainability, reverse osmosis, water reuse, fouling

HORŇÁK, D.; TOUŠ, M.

26.08.2024

Thessaly

978-618-5765-04-0

Proceedings of the International Conference on "Energy, Sustainability and Climate Crisis" 2024

3057-4269

169

173

5

http://escc.uth.gr/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/ESCC-2024_Book-of-Proceedings.pdf#page=137.06