Technology/IT ¦ IDM
September/October 2022 ¦ international-dairy.com · 33
Sachsenmilch
Considerable water savings
Sachsenmilch Leppersdorf now saves up to 3 billion litres
of fresh water a year (photo: Sachsenmilch)
Sachsenmilch has installed state-ofthe
art membrane filtration to re-use
process water (photo: Sachsenmilch)
In line with its claim to be a technological leader in all areas,
Sachsenmilch Leppersdorf, part of the Theo Müller Group,
has invested in a new water treatment plant using membrane
filtration.
The dairy has already installed several plants since 2006
which treat the water extracted from milk or whey and make it
reusable, for example in the evaporation condensers. Since then,
around 4.5 million litres of water are recycled every day. In June
2022, Sachsenmilch commissioned an additional water treatment
plant. The new plant treats production wastewater to such an extent
that it can be used as water for cleaning processes - up to 4
million litres of water a day, i.e. around 1.46 billion litres per year.
This increases the total savings potential to 3 billion litres of fresh
water per year.
Every year the dairy processes around 1.7 billion kg of milk. The
cleaning processes require large amounts of water - about 14 million
litres on an average day. Almost the same amount is produced
as waste water.
The prerequisites for the new development were made back
in 2013. Since that time, the dairy has had a separate wastewater
system and two separate wastewater treatment plants.
The smaller of the two wastewater treatment plants treats sanitary
wastewater, the second treatment plant exclusively purifies
wastewater from production. A separate sewer system ensures
that only the wastewater needed to clean the production facilities,
including product residues and the cleaning agents, reaches the
waste water plant.
The purified water at the end of the process meets the
chemical, physical and chemical, physical and microbiological
requirements of the German drinking water ordinance. In
addition to a risk analysis carried out in advance, the entire process
water treatment is subject to QA in accordance with all applicable
food standards.
/international-dairy.com
