2021 predictions: Pharma Effluent Treatment
Pharmaceutical wastewater treatment expert WEHRLE from Germany predicts a good year 2021 for its business: “In the past years we have shown how effectively and reliably wastewater from drugs production can be treated – with compact treatment plants that eliminate and adsorb Trace Organic Contaminants respectively Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients efficiently at low operation costs. At the moment we see three development vectors that influencing our business of effluent treatment in the pharma industry:
Firstly, pharma production will continue to grow despite or because of the Covid pandemic. This means that existing production facilities need to be extended and new production sites will be built. For both scenarios WEHRLE has suitable solutions. Many production sites work with conventional wastewater treatment plants that are very inflexible when they need to be expanded and also require a lot of valuable land. We can upgrade such plants to a higher performance and capacity with our technology, while requiring the same or even less area than before. Once installed, our modular plant design allows easy and inexpensive further expansions should additional production lines be planned in the factory. This removes a significant limitation factor for business growth.
Secondly, there is increasing pressure on the quality of the wastewater discharged, up to the demand to not emit any wastewater at all, ‘Zero Liquid Discharge’ or ‘ZLD’ in short. WEHRLE offers the right services, technology and know-how to upgrade existing treatment plants with this feature and make water reuse possible, even in the pharma industry. Our treatment experts can perform various site assessments, ranging from a simple treatment plant health and performance check to full water-mapping of the production site and the creation of a customized water management system that provides functionality and flexibility according to customer needs.
Thirdly, the operating costs of effluent treatment plants start to attract even more attention among production managers. Low consumption of chemicals, low area usage of the valuable factory ground and easy-to-perform operation of the wastewater treatment plant are becoming important. This is where our wastewater treatment technology leaves conventional treatment technologies far behind. Our background is the treatment of complex wastewaters focusing on needs of industrial clients who want to produce drugs and not treat wastewater.. That is the task of a modern, industry-level effluent treatment plant. WEHRLE plants automatically adapt to changes in the composition and quantity of wastewater with a very high dynamic range. Especially in the case of wastewater from batch production or seasonal production, this simplifies the operation and saves electricity when the plant is operating at less load than it was designed for.
2021 will also become special for WEHRLE because, in addition to our existing international subsidiaries, our new subsidiaries in Russia and Malaysia will be getting operational in their respective regions and will directly serve our clients there. From Kuala Lumpur, we are on the doorstep of many attractive markets throughout the Southeast Asian region, where we already have several reference plants. This is an excellent springboard for new pharma effluent treatment projects.”
Robert Koerner,
Head of Marketing & Strategic Sales
WEHRLE, Germany