Challenge
Terravant, a California company which processes and bottles wine from more than 2000 tons of grapes annually, had a wastewater challenge they needed to solve. They were producing more wastewater than they could treat within their existing wastewater system.
In 2009 a conventional bioreactor/clarifier was installed at Terravant to handle the wastewater produced. While it was sized to handle the flow, it was undersized by 6-times, to handle the wastewater strength during the harvest and production season.
To continue operation and run within their environmental discharge limits, Terravant was forced to store the wastewater onsite in twenty-two 21,000 gallon tanks. This wastewater was then fed into the bioreactor at a flow it could handle over the course of the year, however, 30,000 gallons remained when the new processing season commenced.
The situation was unsustainable and created many negative effects including:
- Odor problems throughout the year
- Aesthetics of having 22 waste tanks on site
- Cost of renting wastewater tanks annually
- The large footprint of the tanks prevented that space being available profitable use
They began to research solutions from four vendors, including Winesecrets, a Veolia channel partner. Three vendors proposed installing a new system or adding an additional process downstream of the current facility. Winesecrets proposed a much more economical retrofit solution.
Solution
Winesecrets specializes in solving process issues in wineries, and knows when to pull in additional expertise to solve them. They leveraged the wastewater process knowledge of the Wallace Group to review the situation. It became clear that Veolia’s ultrafiltration membranes and increasing biological aeration would be a cost-effective and efficient answer to
Terravant’s dilemma.
The Veolia ZeeWeed* 500S Single-module cassette with reinforced membranes and modular design are ideal for smaller flow wastewater systems. A half-day was required to install the ZeeWeed system (Fig. 1) within the bioreactor tank to immediately produce higher quality effluent. Adding supplemental biological aeration, the complete retrofitted system was up and running at a fraction of the cost and installation time of other proposed options.
Result
Since implementing the ZeeWeed 500S;
- Wastewater storage tanks have not been required, and their resulting issues are gone.
- Effluent targets have been met without increasing the footprint of the wastewater treatment plant.
- Plant staff can focus on wine making, not wastewater treatment.