Path-breaking treatment of production wastewater

March 2021 – An international syrup producer has awarded the contract for the extension and upgrade of its existing wastewater treatment plant at the production site in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to the plant engineering company WEHRLE, based in Southern Germany.

For the treatment of wastewater from the food and beverage production, WEHRLE will upgrade the existing conventional effluent treatment plant to a Membrane Bioreactor (MBR). The existing plant with a throughput of approx. 200 m³ of production wastewater per day currently only reaches 80 m³. The upgrade to a WEHRLE BIOMEMBRAT^® MBR will increase the capacity to 500 m³ per day.

Due to the highly varying wastewater characteristics, the customer was looking for a reliable system with modular design for simple and cost-effective future extensions. With its small footprint, the low chemical consumption and operating costs, the WEHRLE BIOMEMBRAT^® MBR is the ideal process technology.

Since the highly loaded wastewater from the food and beverage production is to be discharged directly into the municipal sewer system after being purified in the wastewater treatment plant, the discharge values of < 80 mg/l COD and < 5 mg/l solids must be reliably maintained. Considering the inlet values of 8,000 mg/l COD and 255 mg/l solids, this is certainly a challenge, but one that WEHRLE is happy to meet. In addition to the design concept and the proven Membrane Bioreactor technology, the scope of supply also includes the construction of the complete plant.

WEHRLE will provide a rental plant with Ultrafiltration technology on site to support the customer until the commissioning of the new plant in spring 2022.