Maximising energy recovery from the brewery wastewater treatment system: a study evaluating the anaerobic digestion wastewater treatment plant at SAB's newlands brewery

Abstract

This study has been encouraged by the successful recovery of useful energy from brewery wastewater using anaerobic digestion technology. It aims to evaluate the environmental benefits or burden of improving energy production by using organic brewery by-products as additional feedstock into the SABWTP. An environmental impact assessment on the SABWTP and its associated process was carried out using life cycle assessment (LCA) tools. Anaerobic digestibility of the two major organic brewery by-products, brewer’s spent grain and brewer’s spent yeast, was evaluated experimentally using laboratory bench scale reactors. The results were used to postulate the feasibility of adding these feedstocks into the SABWTP. Based on these findings, three viable processing scenarios were synthesised and assessed in terms of environmental impact analysis. In the environmental impact analysis, the three scenarios were compared using average process conditions and the main contributing factors to environmental burdens associated with each scenario were identified.