HUBER sludge dewatering solution for new wastewater treatment plant in a dairy industry

The dairy company Bechtel recently built its own new industrial wastewater treatment plant. HUBER supplied three screw press units, type Q-Press® 620, for sludge dewatering.

Naabtaler Milchwerke GmbH & CoKG, Privatmolkerei Bechtel, founded in 1908, is a large German dairy company based in the Bavarian town Schwarzenfeld. As one of the largest and most important dairies in Germany the company processes more than 1000 t milk a day. Selling to 27 European countries, the company is well established internationally as well. About 1,600 milk producers supply the milk which is processed to make cheese, yoghurt, curd, etc.

As the company has been growing, also its water consumption and amount of wastewater generated has increased. The dairy therefore decided in 2016 to build its complete own wastewater treatment plant.

The situation on site

The industrial wastewater treatment plant clarifies the generated wastewater through flotation and downstream SBR technology. The produced surplus sludge is dewatered by two HUBER Screw Press Q-PRESS® 620 units. The press cake comes out almost solid and is transported away in mobile containers. For internal operational reasons they started with dewatering the flotate sludge only recently but the excellent dewatering and separation efficiencies achieved in the pre-tests seem to be sustainable.

Since the dewatering units have been in operation, several truck transports a day have become unnecessary – an important economic advantage for the customer and, moreover, a benefit for the environment as traffic noise and exhaust gases are reduced.

First operational experience

In the initial operation phase, during which the operation of the units was optimised by HUBER SE, a final DR in excess of 18% was reliably achieved with surplus sludge dewatering. The separation efficiency of more than 95% was achieved even without additional filtrate treatment, contrary to competitive systems.

The remarkable results for surplus sludge dewatering are only outperformed by the results achieved with flotate sludge dewatering where dream results of more than 30% are achieved. Energy and polymer consumption are low while the separation degree of > 98% is excellent. This is the point from where the operator OEWA will continue, supported by a master student, optimising equipment operation to tease out one or another percent. We wish our customers all the best and are of course still available for them with help and advice.