Abstract
Water and wastewater management constitutes a practical problem for the food and beverage industry including the brewing
industry. In spite of significant improvement over the last 20 years, water consumption and disposal remain critical from an
environmental and economic standpoint. This paper gives an overview of the world beer market in order to highlight the
heterogeneity in capacity of global beer production. From a synthesis of existing literature, water consumption is analysed and the
most common treatments and the associated costs are reported. Finally, biological and technical alternatives including membrane
operation processes and economic reality are described.
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