2.5.

Food Industry
The food processing industry seeks effective technologies to remove fats, oils and greases from
food processing waste water at acceptable costs. The baking, dairy, oil extraction (e.g. olive,
soybean, cottonseed oil), fish processing and meat and poultry industries as well as
manufacturers of oil-containing foods (e.g. margarine and salad dressing) face the problem of
reducing the oil contaminant load to downstream waste water systems. The recovery of valuable
by-products, such as proteins and milk fat in the dairy industry, while at the same time reducing
the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids (TSS) charges from the
publicly owned treatment works (POTW) make systems that can remove fat, oil, and grease
(FOG) increasingly economical.

The removal of emulsified oils, which is the major contributor to high oil concentrations in the
effluent stream, is more difficult. In DAF and/or electro-coagulation systems, FOG coagulates
and floats to the surface in a separator tank, where it is being removed by scrapers. In membrane
systems, FOG is held back because of physical separation at the sub-micron level. Typically, the
size of oil droplets in emulsions is between 0.1 µm and 0.5 µm. Ultra filtration membranes have
pore sizes below 0.01 µm and work very well on filtering out FOG. Micro filtration membranes
with pore sizes above 0.05 µm can also be effective in oil separation but there is a potential for
oil breakthrough, especially at high emulsion concentrations (www.foodsci. unl.edu/fmc/need-
09.htm).

Tubular UF membranes have been used successfully in the separation of proteins, fats, oil and
greases in salad dressing, margarine and bakery plants, achieving FOG reduction in the waste
water on the order of 99%. Oil in water from can-washing operations also has been removed by
membranes. DAF is a well accepted method of FOG removal in the dairy, meat and poultry
industries. Successful applications have also been found in the baking industry, particularly when
doughnuts are being processed. Through the addition of coagulants and flocculants, very
effective separation is achievable. The DAF treatment has become the standard for treating waste
water in the meat and poultry industry. However, the coagulants and flocculants are fairly
expensive and alter the composition of the retained fats and solids so that re-use as animal feed is
sometimes not possible. A very high retention of FOG (on the order of 99%) has been obtained
with a relatively new technology called electro-coagulation. While electro-coagulation has been
successfully applied for oil removal in the automotive and metal treating industry, only recently
have its capabilities been realized for the food industry. This is an area of interesting
development work.

2.5.1 DAF systems for bakeries

Many food processing plants, such as poultry and meat processors, use DAFs as pretreatment
systems. The experience of these plants may be useful for bakery managers as they consider
DAFs for pretreatment. However, wastewater characteristics vary widely, depending on the
products produced and the time of day. Also, bakeries use considerably less water than large
meat and poultry plants (Carawan and Valentine, 1996). Several bakeries are currently using
DAFs as pretreatment systems. These systems often have removal efficiencies similar to those in
Figure 3. Note that these DAF removal efficiencies were obtained from a multiproduct bakery.
Bread bakeries have substantially less biochemical oxygen demand and fats, oils, and grease
contents. Therefore, opportunities for a DAF in bread plants would be more limited.

Figure 3. DAF removal for multiproduct bakery.

Bakeries are facing increasingly stringent restrictions on their wastewater discharges. In order to
help reduce the concentration of contaminants in their wastewater and to avoid sewer surcharges,
some plant managers have installed systems to pretreat the wastewater before it is discharged to
municipal sewers or other disposal outlets. Many other managers are considering pretreatment to
reduce surcharges or have been asked by their publicly owned treatment works to consider
waste reduction. One way to pretreat wastewater is with a DAF system, which can remove
insoluble materials such as fats, oils, and grease (www.bae.ncsu.edu/bae). Note that soluble
contaminants such as sugar are not usually removed by the system, although they are
occasionally trapped in the float along with other particles. Similarly, bakery wastewater often
contains a large amount of settleable solids—materials such as dough pieces, bits of fruit, nuts,
raisins, and product. These materials will settle because they are heavier than water. Thus, a
DAF tends to negate the settling of these materials. Heavier materials will settle if given enough
time, but some will be trapped with the float. Therefore, the nature of these materials must be
considered in DAF designs for bakeries. Decisions about the use of chemical flocculants in
DAFs are based on cost, system efficiency, and the intended use of the DAF float. Advantages
of use of DAF for bakeries are: reduce grease (FOGs), reduce suspended solids (TSS) and
settleable solids (but only if equipped with a bottom sweep), may help bakeries meet POTW
permit restrictions; do not require excessive maintenance or management may reduce surcharges,
especially for larger bakeries. Disadvantages of use of DAF for bakeries are: do not remove
soluble materials such as sugars, do not remove the BODs associated with soluble materials,
only concentrate the pollutants; the float must still be disposed of properly, are costly to buy and
are expensive to operate. (If high chemical use is required, operational costs will be high.), they
rarely cost less than surcharges, especially for smaller bakeries.