Desalination, industrial, and agricultural wastes are at all-time highs, containing brine output from various cleaning processes full of chemicals, radiation, pharmaceuticals, nutrients, heavy metals, endocrine disrupters, boron, hormones, and salts. This waste is discharged back into the soil and oceans either through surface water and sewer discharge, injection wells, evaporations ponds, or land application from agriculture irrigation. The planet needs a cleaner, more environmentally and ecologically sustainable approach, to treating waste water discharge.The dairy industry is a large contributor to the amount of wastewater produced in America (State of Wisconsin 1998).A typical large cheese and whey plant pulls 500,000 gallons of water out of the ground each day. Due to the future limitations on certain constituents and the need for conserving the world's water, companies are engaging in new technologies to reduce their environmental footprint.The objective of this Phase I proposal is to conduct a water testing program using the MicroEVAPTMsystem to clean and enable reuse of the chloride streams and reverse osmosis retentate used in the cheese manufacturing industry. Since chlorides are heavily used in the cheese manufacturing industry and MicroEVAPTMhas a rich history of high TDS removal, there are several stakeholders that believe MicroEVAPTMmay be the solution to their problem.Micronic is partnering with Grande Cheese for this Phase I SBIR Proposal. Grande's objectives of this project are to determine if Micronic Technologies can cost effectively concentrate their chloride streams. The brine comes from the cheese making process and they would like to return it back to cheese making. The nanofiltration/reverse osmosis retentate is generated during whey processing and they would like to concentrate that for animal feed. The main objective is to assess the potential integration of MicroEVAPTMto generate high-quality potable water for reuse in the plant. The project anticipates returning solids and water to animal feed reducing the amount of water required for farms to pump out of the ground and provide minerals that the cows need. In addition, reusing the concentrated wastewater for road deicing (non-food grade) by the local county saves 15% in rock salt use.Grande Cheese will provide in kind support for the proposed research effort as they are dedicated to furthering research and development to reach their sustainability goals. Grande will provide four sets of the following waste samples to Micronic Technologies for processing: cheese brine, diluted cheese brine, and reverse osmosis retentate. Grande will define parameters of success and provide technical expertise to support market research. With Grande's help, Micronic Technologies will develop a return on investment analysis for the cheese manufacturing industry.The technical objectives and research questions identified will determine if Micronic's clean water and wastewater produced can be reused and promote water conservation in the three wastewater streams.Reverse Osmosis Retentate: Water recovery for potable water reuse, and dairy solids to animal feed (food grade), eliminating all discharge to the environment.Diluted Cheese Brine: Road deicing (non-food grade), replacing purchased rock salt by the County and the use of liquid brine saving 15% in rock salt use.Cheese Brine: Concentrating for reuse back in the cheese making process (food grade), eliminating all discharge to the environment.In addition to cleaning the dirty water and recovering a 95 percent throughput, utilizing MicroEVAPTMreduces wastewater disposal costs and allows resource recovery from the brine. After resource recovery, the eventual small slurry can be dried and encapsulated, eliminating the possibility of leakage, where it can be sent to a landfill. With over 150 tests conducted thus far, MicroEVAPTMconsistently removed over 99% of TDS and most other solids. Micronic Technologies believes it will be successful at removal and concentrating cheese wastewater, due to its high removal history for myriad contaminants, specifically TDS.
