engineering outcomes for water Industry Specialists in water and wastewater treatment Leaders in design & build, upgrades and optimisation Affordable solutions for quality process water and trade waste compliance Call today for an initial consultation Stand No. 3149 sales@apexenvironmental.co.nz 03 929 2675 www.apexenvironmental.co.nz www.foodtechnology.co.nz 15 ONE STOP-SHOP FOR WATER AND TRADE WASTE DISCHARGE SOLUTIONS? With the never-ending drive to increase production, one aspect of food and beverage processing that inevitably comes under pressure is compliance with trade waste discharge consent limits. There can be a high level of reluctance to spend capital to deal with this problem, as this is an area where expenditure does not result in a direct return on investment in the same way increasing production or debottlenecking other areas of the plant would. However, compliance with these environmental standards is a necessary cost of doing business, and a social obligation to maintain New Zealand’s natural environment for future generations. In order to reconcile the tension between this desire to protect the environment and the cost of doing so, locally owned environmental engineering firm Apex Environmental has built up extensive expertise in addressing these concerns at reduced cost, both in terms of capital cost and on-going operating cost of treatment. Apex Environmental provides both ‘off the shelf’ water and wastewater treatment equipment for addressing individual problems like poor performance of an existing treatment plant or contaminated process water, as well as full design-and-build of new and upgraded water and wastewater treatment systems. For new plants, Apex has identified international world-leading technologies and developed its own in-house processes for treating wastewater. One key example of this is the Aerofloat Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) system, which is able to remove fats, oils and other solids from a waste stream for a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. Due to this significant cost advantage and high performance, these small DAF systems have gained widespread favour in New Zealand, with recent installations into sites as diverse as dairy factories, meat processors, bakeries and sausage casing factories. When it comes to upgrades of existing plant, Apex’s focus tends to be on maximising reuse of existing equipment on site in order to minimise the capital spend required. One example would be the conversion of a wastewater storage tank into a bioreactor to remove contaminants from the stored wastewater. At one large dairy factory a more innovative solution was required when the existing wastewater treatment pond was upgraded, making their settling tank redundant. The settling tank was then converted into a DAF plant, both enabling an increase in production and bringing the site back into resource consent compliance, all without any major new items of plant being required. engineering outcomes for water Industry Specialists in water and wastewater treatment Leaders in design & build, upgrades and optimisation Affordable solutions for quality process water and trade waste compliance Call today for an initial consultation Stand No. 3149 sales@apexenvironmental.co.nz 03 929 2675 www.apexenvironmental.co.nz FT159 Perhaps the best return on investment can be achieved simply by optimising the existing treatment plant. Being far from a traditional construction company, Apex employs highly-skilled experts in this field, including PhD-level process engineers and microbiologists. Whilst evaluating the discharges from one meat works in order to determine the most cost effective way of bringing the site back into consent compliance, Apex’s team of experts were able to identify specific operator actions in the factory and existing treatment plant that were contributing to much of the plant’s problems. By simply changing these behaviours and operating their existing equipment better, this site was able to make substantial improvements to its environmental performance.
FT-Sep16
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