Chapter

22

Dairy effluents
Water used in domestic and industrial applications become polluted to a
greater or lesser extent. Water is also used as a transport medium to
carry away waste products. As awareness of the importance of improved
standards of water treatment grows, process requirements become in-
creasingly exacting. The food industry contributes to a great extent to
pollution, particularly as the pollutants are of organic origin. Organic
pollutants normally consist of 1/3 dissolved, 1/3 colloidal and 1/3 sus-
pended substances, while inorganic materials are usually present mainly
in solution.

Dairy Processing Handbook/chapter 22 1


BOD is a measure of the content
of biologically degradable sub-
stances in sewage.
COD indicates the quantity of
the pollutants in waste water
that can be oxidised by a
chemical oxidant.
Organic pollutants
The normal way to express the concentration of a pollutant is to specify
the total quantity per unit volume of sewage. Another and more modern
way of analysing the presence and quantities of organic substances in
sewage effluent is the use of chromatography, such as High-
Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).
However, the quantity of organic substances is normally determined
in the form of;
• biological oxygen demand (BOD)
• chemical oxygen demand (COD)
• calcining loss
• total organic carbon (TOC)
Biological oxygen demand (BOD)
BOD is a measure of the content of biologically degradable substances in
sewage. The substances are broken down by micro-organisms in the
pres- ence of (and therefore with consumption of) oxygen. Oxygen
demand is measured in terms of the quantity of oxygen consumed by
micro-organisms over a period of five days (BOD5) or seven days (BOD7),
in decomposing the organic pollutants in waste water at a temperature of
20C. BOD is meas- ured in mg oxygen/l or g oxygen/m3.
The following relationship is assumed for municipal
sewage: BOD7 = 1.15 x BOD5
Chemical oxygen demand (COD)
COD indicates the quantity of the pollutants in waste water that can be
oxidised by a chemical oxidant. The normal reagents used for this
purpose are strongly acid solutions (to ensure complete oxidation) of
potassium dichromate or potassium permanganate at high temperature.
Consumption of oxidant provides a measure of the content of organic
substance and is converted to a corresponding quantity of oxygen,
expressing the result as mg oxygen/l or g oxygen/m3.
The COD/BOD ratio indicates how biologically degradable the effluent
is. Low values, i.e. < 2, indicate relatively easily degradable substances,
while high values indicate the contrary. However, this relationship cannot
be used generally, but a typical value of COD/BOD for municipal sewage
effluent is often < 2.
In the FIL-IDF Bulletin about Dairy Effluents, Document 138, 1981, it
was reported (by Doedens) that the COD/BOD5 ratio for effluents
generated in different groups of dairies producing liquid milk, butter or
cheese ranged from 1.16 to 1.57, average 1.45, while in other groups of
dairy plants pro- ducing milk powder, whey powder, lactose and casein
the ratio varied from
1.67 to 2.34, average 2.14. However, the general conclusion of the FIL-
IDF Bulletin referred to above is that a COD:BOD ratio established in
one dairy plant cannot be transferred with sufficient reliability to another
plant.
Calcining loss
Calcining loss is obtained by first determining the dry solids content in
a sample, and then calcining it so that the organic substance is burnt.
The difference in weight before and after calcining represents the
quantity of organic substance. The value is expressed in %.
Total organic carbon (TOC)
TOC is another measure of the quantity of organic materials, determined
by measuring the quantity of carbon dioxide produced from combustion
of a sample. The unit is mg/l.
Inorganic pollutants
The inorganic components of sewage consist almost entirely of salts,
and are determined largely by the ionic composition and salt
concentration in the mains water. The presence of these salts in
sewage is normally unim- portant. Present-day effluent treatment
processes concentrate on the re- duction of nitrogen, phosphorus salts
and heavy metals.
Nitrogen and phosphorus compounds are important, as they are nutri-
ents for organisms, e.g. algae, in recipients. As a result of the growth of
algae, secondary processes can proceed in the recipient, forming further
organic substances which, when they decompose, can result in
considera- bly higher oxygen demand than is caused by primary organic
pollutants in the sewage effluent.

Dairy waste water

Dairy waste water can be divided into three categories:
1 Cooling water
2 Sanitary waste water
3 Industrial waste water

Cooling water
As cooling water is normally free from pollutants, it is discharged into
the storm water piping system i.e. the system for run-off water from
rain and melting snow, etc.

Sanitary waste water

The sanitary waste water is normally piped direct to the sewage
treatment plant with or without first having being mixed with industrial
waste water.

Industrial waste water

Industrial waste water emanates from spillage of milk and products
thereof, and from cleaning of equipment that has been in contact with
milk prod- ucts. The concentration and composition of the waste
depends on the production programme, operating methods and the
design of the proces- sing plant.

Table 22.1
BOD of some milk products

ProductBOD5 BOD7
mg/ l mg/ l

Cream, 40% fat400 000 450 000

Whole milk, 4% fat120 000 135 000
Skimmilk, 0.05% fat70 000 80 000
Whey, 0.05% fat40 000 45 000
Whey conc., 60% DM400 000 450 000

Sewage treatment plants are dimensioned to treat a certain quantity of

organic substances and also to be able to deal with certain peak loads.
However, one organic substance – fat – presents specially difficult prob-
lems. Besides having a high BOD (cream with 40% fat has a BOD5 of
about 400 000 mg oxygen/l while skimmilk has 70 000 mg/l), fat sticks to
the walls of the mains system as well as causing sedimentation problems
in the sedimentation tank as it rises to the surface.
Dairy waste water should therefore pass a flotation plant where it is
aer- ated with “dispersion water” (the method of supplying finely-
dispersed air bubbles to the water at a pressure of 400 – 600 kPa is
called dissolved-air

Waste water with a pH of over
10 or below 6.5 must not be
discharged to the sewage
system.
flotation). The air bubbles attach themselves to the fat, carrying it rapidly
to the surface where it is strained off, manually or mechanically
depending on the size of the plant. The flotation plant is often located
close to the dairy building and the waste passes through it in a
continuous flow.
The defatted effluent can then be mixed with the sanitary waste
water going to the sewage treatment plant. Table 22.1 list the BOD of
some milk products.
pH of dairy effluent
The pH of dairy effluent varies between 2 and 12 as a result of the
use of acid and alkaline detergents for plant cleaning.
Both low and high pH values interfere with the activity of the micro-
organisms that break down organic pollutants in the biological
treatment stage of the sewage treatment plant, transforming them into
biological sludge (cell detritus).
As a rule, waste water with a pH of over 10 or below 6.5 must not be
discharged to the sewage system, as it is liable to corrode the pipes.
Used detergents are therefore normally collected in a mixing tank, often
located close to the cleaning plant, and the pH is measured and
regulated to, say, pH 7.0 before it is discharged to drain.
Reducing the quantity of
pollutants in waste water
It is constantly necessary to control and prevent wastage of water
and product in the processing plant.
Hidden losses of water in subfloor and underground piping can be
de- tected by reading the water meter and recording the quantity used
at the end of the day.
Daily records of water consumption should then be compared with
the daily quantity of milk that has been processed. The water
consumption, expressed as m3 per tonne of treated milk, should be
plotted on a graph kept in an easily accessible place. A typical
water/milk ratio is 2.5/1, but with intense saving of water it is possible
to come down to a ratio of 1/1.
The following general recommendations can serve as a guide to
reduc- ing wastage of water and product:
General milk treatment
• In reception of milk, particularly when tankers are emptied, it is
important that the outlet from the tankers is at least 0.5 m above the
receiving container or tank, and that the connecting hose is well
streched, to ensure that the tankers are completely drained.
• All pipelines must be identified and marked to avoid wrong
connections that would result in unwanted mixing of products as well
as leakage of milk.
• When pipes are installed they should be laid with a slight and
correctly calculated gradient to make them self-draining. In addition,
the pipes must be well suppported to prevent vibration, which could
cause the couplings to work loose and thus cause leakage.
• All tanks should be equipped with level controls to prevent overflow.
When the highest permitted level is reached, either the feeding pump
is automatically stopped and the plant operator alarmed, or an
automatic valve system is activated to route the product to another
preselected tank.
• It is better to prevent wastage of product in the first place than to flush
it away with a hose afterwards. Try to keep the floors dry; this also
makes leaks easier to detect.
• Make sure that the piping system and tanks are properly emptied
before they are rinsed out with water.
• Check that couplings are airtight; if air leaks into the piping system it
will cause increased burning-on in heaters, erosion problems in
homogenisers and foaming in milk and cream tanks (which will then
be harder to empty completely).

Cheese production area

• Make sure that open cheese vats are not filled to the top; stop
filling when the milk level is at least 10 cm below the rim.
• Collect whey carefully, and try to find commercial uses for it
instead of discharging it as waste. 6
• Curd on the floor should be swept up and treated as solid waste
– not flushed into the gutter with water. 5

Butter production area

• Cream and butter stick more readily than milk to surfaces they
come in contact with, and will aggravate contamination of3
waste water unless they are removed before cleaning starts. 4
• After the end of a butter production run, all accessible 2
surfaces should be manually scraped clean. 1
• Cream and remaining butter can then be removed with steam
and hot water and collected in a container for separate
treatment.

Milk powder production area Fig. 22.1 System for measuring the
• The evaporators should be run at the lowest possible level flow in an open canal with a venturi
to prevent overcooking. flume.
• Re-use the condensate as cooling water after circulation 1 Waste water canal
2 Venturi flume
through a cooling tower, or as feed water to the boiler.
3 Measuring pit
• Spilled dry products should be swept up and treated as 4 Connection between the canal
solid waste. and measuring pit
5 Float
Milk packaging area 6 Measuring and recording device
• The filling machines can be provided with drains
discharging into one or more containers.
• Returned packages can be emptied into containers and
the mixture of sweet and sour liquids used as animal 5 6
feed.

Outlet control
Disposal of waste water is subject to regulation in many countries.
Outlet control, for example, must be arranged so that the volume 3
of waste water is continuously measured and recorded and an 7
aliquot part, in proportion to the volume of the flow, is sampled.
Figure 22.1 illustrates a system for measuring the flow in an 4
open canal with a venturi flume. For information about the venturi
flume and other measuring systems, please contact the munici- 2 8
pal authorities dealing with sewage water treatment. As to
sampling, one example of the procedure is shown in 9
figure 22.2.
Signals indicating the volume of water measured in
the flume are transmitted via a control unit to the samp- 1 2
ling device. An aliquot volume of the flow is sampled
whenever a predetermined volume of water (say
100 l)
has passed the flow transmitter The daily samples are mixed, and after Fig. 22.2 Automatic sampling system.
an optional period a smaller volume of the mixed samples is analysed. 1 Measuring flume
2 Measuring probe
3 Flow transmitter
4 Recorder
5 Summation device
6 Control unit
7 Subunit
8 Air
9 Sampling device
 Sewage treatment,
a general survey
Various arrangements are possible; the choice of treatment is determined
by the required degree of pollutant reduction. Figure 22.3 shows four
possi- ble systems.

A B C
1. Post-precipitation
Conventional three-stage process with mechanical, A, biological, B, and
chemical, C, treatment. Effective and reliable, but fairly expensive.

Grid A C B
2. Pre-precipitation
A two-stage process developed during the eighties. Chemical treatment, C, is
com- bined with mechanical sedimentation, A, in the first stage, which results in
Sand trap
high- grade phosphorus reduction as well as about 70% BOD reduction. This
relieves the load on the biological stage, B, which thus requires much less basin
volume and energy input than with conventional post-sedimentation.
Sedimentation

Chemical
treatment

Aeration A C
3. Direct precipitation
A single-stage process, with combined mechanical, A, and chemical, C,
Fig. 22.3 The various stages of sewage
treatment as in pre-precipitation, but with no succeeding biological treatment
treatment can be combined in several
stage.
ways.

A B/C
4. Simultaneous precipitation
A two-stage process with mechanical treatment, A, followed by a combined
biologi- cal-chemical stage, B/C. A fairly cheap method of satisfying the demand
for phos- phorous reduction without expensive additional basin capacity, but less
efficient than if the biological and chemical treatments are performed separately.

Sewage treatment in its original form consisted simply in removing the

bulk of solid impurities by mechanical sedimentation (A). When this
treatment was judged to be insufficient, it was supplemented with
biological treatment
(B) to decompose the organic compounds.
Many sewage treatment plants were later extended with a third stage
for chemical treatment (C) when emission of phosphorus became a
serious problem. The process in plants of this type is called post-
precipitation be- cause the chemical precipitation step comes last.
Later experience has however proved that it is possible to obtain the
same result if chemical precipitation is combined with mechanical
treatment in the first step. This system is called pre-precipitation (see
figure 22.3.2).
This arrangement also represents a major rationalisation of the
process, as most of the sewage treatment is done in one step. The
phosphorus content is already reduced by 90% and the BOD by 75% in
the pre-sedi-
 5

11
8
6
10

7
1 2

9
4

Fig. 22.4 The various stages of a sew- age

3
treatment plant.

1 Inlet channel
2 Grid
mentation basins. As a result, the biological stage has a much lighter 3 Sand trap
load to deal with and requires less basin volume and energy input. 4 Aeration
Figure 22.4 shows a typical sewage plant layout with pre-precipitation. 5 Silo for flocculant
6 Pre-precipitation
Mechanical treatment 7
8
Pre-sedimentation
Biological treatment
The primary (mechanical) stage of sewage treatment comprises 9 Aeration
strainer grid, sand trap and primary sedimentation basins. 10 Post-sedimentation
The grid traps coarse solid matter: plastic, rags, food residues, etc. 11 Clarified effluent to recipient
This matter is continuously scraped off the grid and disposed of
separately, usually as landfill.
The sand trap is a basin in which coarse separation takes place. It is
dimensioned and operated in such a way that sand and other heavy
partic- les have time to settle to the bottom, while fat and other impurities
that are lighter than water float to the surface. The sediment is pumped
away, and the floating scum is removed by scrapers. These waste
products are like- wise disposed of separately.
Air is blown into the sand trap, partly to keep finer parfticles in
suspen- sion and partly to prevent putrefaction processes that cause
bad smells.

Chemical treatment
The principal purpose of chemical sewage treatment, also known as
preci- pitation, is to rid the water of phosphorus. Municipal sewage
systems nor- mally collect 2.5 – 4 grams of phosphorus per person per
day, mainly in the form of phosphates. Detergents account for about 30%
of the phosphate content; the remaining 70% comes mainly from human
excreta and food residues.
Chemical precipitation with iron and aluminium based flocculants can
remove almost 100% of the phosphorus present in waste water, while
con- ventional biological trreatment only reduces the phosphorus content
by 20 – 30%.
The precipitation stage starts with flocculation tanks, where the floccu-
lants are added and vigorously mixed into the water by agitators. This re-
sults in precipitation of insoluble phosphates, initially in the form of very
fine particles which, however, gradually aggregate into larger flocs. The
flocs settle out in pre-sedimentation basins, from which a clear effluent
overflows into the basin for biological treatment.
Pre-sedimentation is the final step in the combined mechanical and
chemical treatment. The water is allowed to flow slowly through one or
more basins where the finer particles gradually settle to the bottom as
pri- mary sludge.
The sedimentation basins are equipped with devices that continuously
 scrape the sediment into a sump, and transverse gutters that carry off
wa- ter from the clarified surface layer.

Biological treatment
The remaining organic impurities in the "overflow" from the chemical
treat- ment are broken down with the help of micro-organisms, e.g.
bacteria, which feed on the organic substances present in the water.
The micro-organisms must have access to oxygen to perform their
func- tion. This is supplied in the form of air blown into the aeration basin.
The micro-organisms reproduce continuously, forming an active sludge.
This sludge is removed from the water by settling in post-sedimentation
basins. Most of it is recirculated to the aeration basins to keep the
biological breakdown process going; the excess sludge is removed from
the process for further treatment and the clarified effluent is discharged to
the recipient.
An alternative to the aeration basin is the biological filter, which is a
con- tainer filled with pieces of stone or plastic. The water is sprinkled
over the filter by a rotating distributor, trickles down through the filter bed,
and is oxygenated by air circulation. A “skin” of micro-organisms builds
up on the surfaces of the stones, etc., breaking down the organic
impurities in the water.

Sludge treatment
The sludge from the various stages of treatment is collected in
thickening tanks to which chemicals are added to facilitate further
aggregation of the solid particles.

Primary sedimentation basins

100 m3 of sludge from primary sedimentation basins.
DS 2%
Water content 98%

Sludge thickener
66 m3 of water removed in the sludge thickener.
34 m3 of sludge with 6% DS continues to centrifuge
plant.

Decanter
26 m3 of water removed in decanter centrifuge.
8 m3 of dewatered sludge with 25% DS is dis-
charged. Reduction in volume in centrifuge
stage is 76%.

Fig. 22.5 Reduction in volume of wet sludge from the primary settling stage after
treatment in a sludge thickener and decanter centrifuge. The amount of
dewatered sludge discharged from the decanter centrifuge is only 8% of the
volume of the wet sludge from the sedimentation basins.
 To further break down organic matter and to reduce evil-smelling sub-
stances, the sludge is eventually pumped into a digester where the
organic subtances are broken down under anaerobic conditions into
carbon dioxide and methane and very small amounts of hydrogen gas,
ammonia and hy- drogen sulphide.
Carbon dioxide and methane are the main components of digester
gas, which can be utilised as fuel for heating.
Digester sludge is a homogeneous, practically odourless, dark-
coloured substance which still has a high moisture content, 94 - 97%. It
is therefore dewatered, most effectively in a decanter centrifuge, which
discharges a solid phase of about one-eighth of the original volume, as
shown in figure 22.5.
The dewatered sludge can then be utilised as fertiliser or landfill, or
sim- ply deposited as waste.