Aqana and Suez for Spanish Zuvamesa
DACS® Waste Water Treatment Plant for Zuvamesa
ZUVAMESA is Spain’s largest orange processing company and is located in Valencia. The company process the oranges into orange juice and high-value ingredients. The company has to increase the effluent treatment capacity without having to expand the size of the treatment facilities. The new treatment system has to reduce the average cost of wastewater treatment dramatically. SUEZ WATER Spain and ZUVAMESA have been working together for over five years on the operation and maintenance of the treatment plant.
Solution
To save on operational and investment costs for the end client ZUVAMESA, AQANA designed and commissioned for SUEZ WATER SPAIN the DACS® RETROFIT reactor. In this concept, the anaerobic reactor is integrated into the existing infrastructure as is a stainless steel tank, the pre-treatment steps, piping, pump, and controls. Besides the detailed engineering of the DACS®reactor and the delivery of the biomass carriers,
AQANA cooperated with SUEZ WATER, their exclusive partner for Spain and Portugal, with the design of the biogas installation.
Treating the highly concentrated wastewater (20.000mg/l COD) with the DACS® technology allows the biogas produced to be recovered as an energy source. To minimize the cost of pH control AQANA incorporated in the design their innovative recirculation loop. The long-term removal efficiency of the DACS®on CODtotal is around 80%, and the total biological efficiency achieved by the DACS® reactor and the activated sludge reactor is around 98% on COD. After a solid removal step, the water will be discharged into the Mediterranean Sea.
Instead of being a large electrical power consumption, necessary to aerate the activated sludge treatment plant, the plant turned after the DACS®-RETROFIT into a net energy producer. The volume and costs of aerobic sludge generated are reduced by 80% and the necessary footprint to treat the effluent is smaller.
DACS® Technology allows treating effluents with a high organic load, such as in juice manufacturing processes, optimizing the economic balance of the factory with the most robust system on the market.
Design summary
The summary below shows the COD design criteria and COD reduction of the DACS® reactor during high-season:
- DACS® reactor: volume 3.000 m3
- AGAR® biomass carrier: volume 1.000 m3
- Future load design: 40.000 kg.COD/day
- Actual available load: 20.000 kg.COD/day
- Actual carrier VLR: 20kg.CODm3/m3.day
- COD reduction: 85%
- Methane concentration: 84%
- Actual biogas production: 7.350 m3/day
Due to the robust en flexible design of the DACS® reactor, the installation is capable of running during low-season on 30-50% of the design capacity with a COD reduction > 80 %.
