Distilleries generate highly concentrated liquid waste streams as pot ale and spent lees that are expensive to manage and often trucked off site as waste or low-value animal feed. With many distilleries being limited either by their environmental permits for direct discharge or plot space for on-site wastewater treatment, valorising those streams has been a challenge. Increasing pressure on water reuse, energy costs and emissions standards has shifted this challenge from regulatory driven to being a strategic business advantage. Aquature’s BASE platform turns these effluents into clean water, green chemicals and recoverable energy - directly on site.
A Scottish distillery got in touch with us to see if we could help them manage their liquid streams on-site to reduce waste tankering, a measure that is currently a hassle on business operations and a limitation on production expansion. Due to the spatial constraints in available plot size on-site and highly variable flows of pot ale and spent lees, conventional digestion was tested but found too large and unstable to be a feasible path towards value recovery from their liquid waste.
The Challenge
- High-COD wastewater from pot ale and spent lees
- Significant tankering costs and waste limitations by environmental permits
- Complexity of logistics between intake deliveries and shipping waste for discharge
- Fluctuating batch loads in volume and concentration that stress conventional anaerobic energy recovery systems
Wastewater handling was seen as a necessary burden and cost, in connection with being a limiting factor in options to expand their operations.
At a Glance
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Aquature’s Proposition
Aquature installs a modular, containerised BASE unit to treat a high-strength effluent stream directly at the distillery site:
- Removal of organic and inorganic pollutants from pot ale and spent lees in one process
- Convert pollutants into green hydrogen and caustic for CIP, while reducing the cost for water reuse of the existing installation
- Reduce or eliminate the need for offsite tankering of waste streams and caustic handling
- Recover up to 20% more energy as hydrogen than if extracted by digester as biogas
The process is designed to handle differing wastewater concentrations and flows from pot ale and spent lees production, maintaining stable performance across production peaks and low-flow periods at minimal buffering.
Results
- On-site treatment of high-COD effluents
Less reliance on external factors such as tankering logistics. - Reduced total wastewater handling costs
Combining savings from avoided trucking, reduced third-party fees, and energy recovery. - 2.2 GWh/year energy recovery potential
For a representative brewery of more than 100 m³/day mixed wastewater produced, equivalent to 10% of utility demand. - 4,000 tCO2eq emissions reduction
From 800 tCO2 captured and 3,200 tCO2eq avoided by green chemicals reuse
Business Impact
For distilleries, Aquature turns a volatile, high-cost and operative burden waste stream into a predictable, value-generating asset:
- Lower operating and logistics costs from replacement of fossil-based chemicals by on-site sourced low carbon caustic and hydrogen
- Reduced exposure to tightening discharge and water reuse regulations
- A visible, data-backed contribution to decarbonisation and circularity goals
With Aquature’s BASE platform, distilleries can treat, valorise and reuse the commodities in their wastewater on site - turning distillation residues into a source of clean water and green energy.
