What is COW Water?
COW Water or Condensate of Whey Water is condensate generated from the process of evaporation of Dairy products such as whole milk, skim milk, sweet whey and acid whey concentration.
What is COW Water Reuse?
The dairy industry in Ireland produces enormous quantities of COW Water each year. COW water is commonly not reused and is often discharged as wastewater. However some dairies apply high spec hygienic reverse osmosis technologies which results in poor quality permeate with high organic loading as well as unnecessarily high operational expenses due to frequent chemical cleans and membrane replacements.
This presents an exciting opportunity for the treatment and reuse of cow water through specialised water technologies, reducing the industries carbon footprint, meeting sustainability goals and saving costs.
Why COW Water Reuse?
The reuse of COW water presents a number of exciting opportunities and advantages for the dairy industry:
- COW water is collected at high temperatures and this energy can be recovered.
- COW water’s high quality with low conductivity levels and low hardness means it has many potential applications within the industry including Clean in Place (CIP), process water, boiler feed water and cooling water.
- Reduces the fresh water intake and use.
- Lowers wastewater production.
What problems does COW Water Reuse Solve?
The solutions we offer include pretreatment of the feed streams prior to reverse osmosis. These pretreatment technologies include Moving Bed Biofilm Reactors (MBBR), Membrane Bioreactor (MBR); Fixed bed and Ultrafiltration (UF).
We refer to a combination of these technologies under the names of biopROtector (MBBR, Fixed & UF) and Biopolisher “BiPo” (MBR).
Depending on the quality of feed streams and the intended use and volume of the product water different solutions are provided.
These pretreatment technologies in combination with conventional reverse osmosis systems results in:
- Excellent quality permeate streams with low TOC (± 0.5 mg/L), low conductivity and reduced NH4 content; which is suitable for many process applications.
- Reduced risk of biofouling in downstream systems, less cleaning and disinfection.
- Less cleaning in place (CIP) of RO and UF membranes (Lower OPEX).
- Less replacement of RO and UF elements (Lower OPEX).
- High availability of membrane units.
Speak to one of our experts to learn how we can help your site reuse its COW Water
COW Water Case Study
Royal Friesland Campina, is a multinational dairy company wholly owned by the dairy co-operative Zuivelcoöperatie. FrieslandCampina is present in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and sells products in more than 100 countries.
Veolia Water Technologies has provided FrieslandCampina with innovative technologies capable of making a real impact on water consumption.
Since 2013 at least 300,000 m3 of water per day has been reused through the application of new purification technologies. Not only has the ground and tap water usage been reduced but also the level of water discharge to the municipal wastewater treatment plant has been decreased, reducing organic and hydraulic taxes.
Last but not least, the increase of available water supply has contributed to FrieslandCampina’s efforts to extend their production capacity by 75% from 2011 to 2016.
Read the full case study here: