The food and beverages processing industry requires a huge amount of water. One of the main problems is the amount of wastewater continuously produced in the food plants. The water is used as an ingredient, a cleaning agent, for boiling and cooling purposes, for transportation and conditioning of raw materials.
Spent process water in the food industry (salt content as el. conductivity <3000μS/cm and COD<700mgO2/l) can be desalinated and organics can be removed so as to fulfill the requirements for water reuse. Food industry standards specify that, spent process water intended for reuse (even for cleaning purposes) must be at least of drinking quality.
Regulations for other applications, such as boiler make-up water or warm cleaning water, are even more stringent.
There has been a study on the possibilities for reuse of vapor condensate in a milk processing company (dried milk production) as boiler make-up water, and the reuse of chiller shower water in a meat processing company (sausage production) as warm cleaning water.
