Integrated technology for wastewater solution at beverage company

Products For Industry (PFi) is introducing a cross-flow membrane solution made from titanium, which is designed to provide benefits compared to traditional wastewater treatment methods. After more than 10 years of development, the solution is now being tested with a beverage company in Australia.

The beverages company wanted an advanced wastewater solution that would increase its throughput while lowering its environmental footprint. The solution will be used to separate solids from liquid streams in various stages of the waste stream process.

“This solution is game-changing for the food and beverage industry, particularly beverages and spirits, because titanium allows for a lower footprint and longer times between clean-in-place (CIP), thereby reducing downtime,” said PFi Managing Director Gavin Dunwoodie.

“With traditional membranes made of ceramic or plastic, back-pulsing and cleaning often creates problems, so the overall lifetime of the equipment is reduced,” Dunwoodie said.

To develop the titanium cross-flow membrane solution, PFi built a new factory on its existing site in Queensland. Several pilots were conducted at a wastewater treatment plant in New Zealand three years ago. According to Dunwoodie, the titanium solution was found to allow very high flow and flux rates, easy and fast CIP, and no fouling or long-term issues with fats, oils and greases (FOG). “It also showed us that running costs and energy use would be reduced over the system’s lifetime, and the titanium membrane can be 100% recycled at the end of its use in the solution,” he said.

For the automation hardware, Rockwell Automation’s CompactLogix Control System and PanelView Plus Graphic Terminal was selected.

CompactLogix controllers are designed to help meet the growing demands of smart machines and equipment for manufacturing, with enhanced security and good performance and capacity.

PanelView Plus provides the graphical interface through a seamless integration with the CompactLogix Controller. This integration enables engineers to enter configuration information once and use it for the entire automation design. It also helps build modern applications with high-speed HMI buttons for jogging applications, scalable vector graphics and a pre-configured system banner that provides diagnostic information.

“Rockwell worked with us to select the best hardware for the job, made sure it was fit for purpose and supported us along the way,” Dunwoodie said.

“Additionally, the customer specified that the coding style needed to be PAC-ML, an internationally recognised standard, so Rockwell set up its technologies to match this need.”

Solution advantages

Being the ninth most common metal in the Earth’s crust, titanium is as strong as steel but weighs 45% less. It is also non-magnetic, non-corrosive and doesn’t conduct electricity.

With titanium’s natural advantages, its use in a cross-flow membrane comes with several advantages:

• It has a continuous length of more than 1.3 m
• A larger range of apertures and filtration sizes are possible
• Wall thicknesses below 400 µm are possible
• It has higher levels of resistance to temperature, acidity and pressure
• There are high flux rates and flow levels through the membrane
• Materials are non-perishable and recyclable
• The tube density and surface area per housing is good
• It is back-pulsable, steam-cleanable and chemical resistant
• Longer times are possible between CIP, which reduces downtime
• It has a lower footprint, lower energy consumption and greater product life.

Dunwoodie said he sees great potential for this solution globally and is looking to scale up operations, after successful pilots, testing and now service with the beverage company.

“Rockwell’s standard design will help with our solution’s market acceptance when we enter the export market. There is particularly strong potential in the spirit industry, where it can replace paper membranes to deliver better outcomes with reduced waste,” he said.

“Titanium provides a true closed-loop solution, as the only 100% recyclable membrane even after 20 or more years in service, which is an outstanding benefit to an end user’s ESG goals.”