Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Cost Effective, Integrated Water & Wastewater Solutions for Wine Makers

A Case Study: Dumol Winery; Windsor, California.

The new Dumol Winery in Windsor, California was completed just in time for the crush of 2008 after a very compact construction period.

One of the major problems confronting the winery industry is the high-strength process wastewater generated by washing down crushing equipment, tanks, barrels, and through other phases of winery operations. At Dumol, Bill Wilson of Carlile Macy designed a separate process water treatment system to pretreat this high-strength wastewater prior to discharge to the municipal sewer system. The main treatment system consists of two underground concrete tanks under the pavement next to the building, preceded by a specialized screen filter that removes and dewaters pomace and other solids in the flushed process water.

A small compressor injects air and creates mixing and recirculation of the primary tank’s 5,000 gallons of water, inoculating it with specialized bacteria that is capable of rapidly consuming soluble wastes in the process water. From this bioreactor tank, water flows to a settling tank and then discharges to the sewer lateral after passing through an effluent filter. This cost-effective system is very low-maintenance and space-efficient.

The remarkably low biological oxygen demand of the discharge water has netted substantial reduction in sewer connection fees. Since the system is capable of producing recycled water, provision has been made to install an irrigation pump and final polishing equipment to connect to the landscape irrigation system, should that become desirable. With increasing demands on water supplies from all sources, even the availability of municipal recycled water may become restricted or costly in the future. Over the first few months of operation, the system has exceeded expectations. Water quality and performance continue to be monitored by Carlile Macy.


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