Pacific Beverages brewery designer scoops Australian eco prize

By Ben BOUCKLEY

- Last updated on GMT

Pacific Beverages brewery designer scoops Australian eco prize
A waste water recovery plant at a site run by SAB Miller/Coca-Cola Amatil JV Pacific Beverages has won an Australian prize for setting high stands in terms of water reuse and green energy generation.

Bluetongue Brewery in New South Wales, engineered by CST Wastewater solutions and Global Water Engineering (GWE), meets the targets set by the SAB Miller and Coca-Cola Amatil JV Pacific Beverages.

Designed with an annual capacity of 1.5m hectolitres, the brewery targets a reduction in water use to 2.2 liters of water per liter of beer produced for the Australian market.

A water recovery plant cut overall energy needs 15% in its first year of operation by providing biogas for boiler heating, and this anaerobic technology won GWE a 2012 Mercury Award from Logistics Magazine.

Waste water has green energy potential

CST Wastewater Solutions MD, Michael Bambridge, said the award showed the huge potential that new technologies have to transform waste water byproducts from an industrial disposal expense into green energy profits.

Observing that Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent, Bambridge warned that  water conservation was doubly important there.

“While solar power, wind power and tidal power grab daily headlines worldwide, anaerobic waste water digestion technologies are quietly but effectively responding to the need for industry to break free now from the cost and pollution of fossil fuels – and the financial penalties such as carbon taxes they face,”​ he said.

Typical payback within two years

Bambridge added that any factory with a biological waste stream or wastewater with a high COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) could easily use this technology to produce energy.

“Some companies making the investment have achieved payback within a year. Most typically achieve it within two years,”​ he claimed.

Bluetongue Brewery (picture) was completed in 2010 and is the second-largest in New South Wales, and claims on its website to be saving the equivalent of up to 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools annually as a result of its water recycling plant.

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