Case studies

Compañía Cervecerías Unidas

The Chilean company producer of beverages “Compañía de Cerveceras Unidas (CCU)” decided to start its own project to build a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) for its industrial effluents to avoid fines for the discharge of industrial water to the new municipal WWTP built by the Chilean government to clean up the Mapocho river.

Customer problem

The plant had an ineffective system to treat its effluents, with the following problems:

• Manual screening of coarse solids, which had continuous obstruction of the grids.
• Neutralization and pH adjustment. It presented a poor pH control at high discharge flows.
• Submersible aerator for the mixing of the pumping pit, which presented deficient aeration causing bad odors and poor mixing.

IBTech® solution

The integral proposal included:

• Basic and detail engineering
• Procurement of equipment
• Automation of the WWTP
• Project Management
• Technical supervision of work
• Start-up

IBTech® considered the use of biogas, byproduct of the treatment, for energy saving in the factory. The biogas would be used to replace part of the natural gas in the boilers of the factory, thereby reducing the operating cost of the WWTP.

Results

Once the treatment plant was completely built and in operation, the quality of the treated water complied with Chilean regulations (DS 90). During the development of this project, an important linkage with the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Unit Iztapalapa (UAM-I) was kept in order to develop the system of washing of biogas, as this institution is a pioneer in the field of flue gas desulfurization.