Gábor Békefi

CEO

Dreher Breweries

90-95 % of beer is water, moreover almost every technological step of its production requires water. Although our own wells provide water in the long run, the availability and quality in some places in the world is at risk. Therefore, it is extremely important for us to be conscious with clean water and to reduce our environmental impact by treating wastewater.

The establishment of a wastewater treatment plant

Industry: Food

Date: since 2007

Water


Solutions of the macro-sustainability challenges

Maintaining water quality through the protection of subsoil and surface water by effectively treating all wastewater and effectively managing other related emissions

Further targets:

What´s the solution?

The continuous control and reduction of the amount of organic matter in the wastewater is an important factor in the brewing industry. Therefore, Dreher has set up its own wastewater pre-treatment plant. Not only the discharge limits set by the authority are being met, but the organic matter content of the treated wastewater has been reduced even more by technological optimization.

When biogas production was reduced as a result of the decreasing amount of beer loss, we introduced adding waste yeast to the wastewater. Due to the increased amount of organic matter content, we are now able to produce more biogas than in the previous years. Thanks to the implementation of this development, the yeast is added to the wastewater under continuous control.

We were the first in Hungary to build an online control system based on the spectrophotometric measurement principles, which can be used to measure the organic matter and nitrogen content of both the incoming and outgoing wastewater while the system is automated by using an algorithm.

Business connection

We need to use far fewer chemical substances at a biological pre-treatment plant when neutralizing the chemicals. In other words, our wastewater treatment from this point of view has become more cost-effective. During the program, biogas is produced in an environmentally-friendly way, so we have energy available to us free of charge, which brings significant savings to the company.

Results

Due to the reduction of beer loss during production, the burden of our organic matter decreased by more than 10 % between 2016 and 2018. Thanks to the implementation of additional waste yeast, the amount of biogas increased by almost 30% compared to the total amount of natural gas.