Method of reducing industrial water use
AssigneeEcolab USA Inc.
InventorsDeepak A. Musale, Yogesh Bhole, Vaideeswaran Sivaswamy
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Abstract
The invention provides methods and compositions for reducing the amount of water required in an industrial process, especially a bottling process such as beer or beverage manufacturing. The method comprising the steps of: collecting water used to rinse cleaned and/or dirty recycled bottles, spraying the collected water at a food contacting piece of equipment as part of a CIP rinse, and passing the CIP second rinse water into a cooling tower as make-up water. The method allows for the re-use of water already in the system but by being careful where each water stream goes the water does not accumulate contaminants that would damage the cooling tower or foul the bottled product or vessel that is cleaned by CIP method.
Claims5
A method of recycling water for use in an industrial process comprising the steps of:
- collecting a fluid used to rinse bottles, wherein the fluid comprises aluminum, residual solids, a colloid, dissolved matter, and a surfactant;
- reducing a temperature of the fluid to ambient temperature,
- adding an adsorbent to adsorb the surfactant in the fluid,
- precipitating the aluminum by reducing the pH to 6.5 to 7.5, wherein the reducing the pH is performed after adding the adsorbent,
- clarifying the fluid to remove precipitated solids,
- removing residual solids from the fluid by a method selected from the group consisting of:
- multi-media filter, microfiltration, centrifugation, and any combination thereof,
- removing the colloid from the fluid by ultrafiltration, and
- removing dissolved matter from the fluid by a method selected from the group consisting of nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, and any combination thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.