Cost-effective distillery water treatment

Sustainable water management practices are crucial to ensure the long-term viability of Sugar & Ethanol production while minimizing its ecological footprint, because water is vital to the Sugar & Ethanol production process. In sugar production, water is used extensively in irrigating sugarcane fields, washing and extracting juice from the harvested cane, and in subsequent refining and crystallization stages. Similarly, in ethanol production from sugarcane, water is essential for fermentation, where yeast converts sugars into ethanol, and in distillation processes to separate ethanol from water.

However, the significant challenge lies in managing water resources sustainably to avoid straining local water supplies and the impact on water quality due to the discharge of processing effluents. Addressing these challenges requires implementing efficient irrigation practices, optimizing water use in processing plants through recycling and reuse, and adopting advanced wastewater treatment technologies to minimize environmental impact. Paques’ biotechnologies revitalize resources and make distillery water treatment & sugar industry wastewater treatment much more sustainable.

Sugar industry wastewater treatment is full of variables. The substrates vary from beet to sugarcane, from wheat to cassava or agave. Likewise, the end product can be sugar, ethanol and a variety of spirits. There are also multiple effluents from sugar & ethanol production: condensates, thin stillage, vinasse and conventional wastewater from the production process.

Due to our worldwide presence and more than 100 references in distillery water treatment & sugar industry wastewater treatment, Paques has seen it all Paques has broad experience with a wide spectrum of distillery waste streams, including evaporator condensate, thin stillage (grain, fruit) and vinasse (sugar cane).and has developed diverse solutions.

• Wastewater streams from the production of (bio) ethanol or ethanol spirits are generally well suitable for anaerobic treatment as they contain organic compounds. We have pioneered anaerobic solutions that transform organic pollutants from sugar & ethanol production into valuable biogas and clean water, such as BIOPAQ^® UASB, BIOPAQ^® IC, BIOPAQ^® ICX and BIOPAQ^® RISE.
• When the amount of solids in distillery water treatment is too high, we offer our CBD^® technology, which eliminates pre-treatment.
• ANAMMOX^® allows excessive nitrogen to be removed, using up to 60% less aeration energy compared to conventional systems and without the need of using an external carbon source like methanol.
• We are also able to remove the H2S from the biogas generated by our anaerobic technologies using the THIOPAQ^® system.
• Paques has even supplied a great number of complete turnkey wastewater treatment plants to sugar & ethanol producers worldwide, combining our technologies with pre-treatment and reuse technologies.