Appropriate management of industrial wastewaters
involves a two-stage approach. The first stage must be attributed to in-plant control alternatives
such as waste minimization, reuse, water
use reduction etc. The next step must cover the
application of end-of-pipe treatment to meet the
effluent discharge standards. Since a management strategy that skips the first stage is stated to increase
the financial burdens enormously [1] especially
for some industrial premises, possible inplant
control applications must be considered as
an inevitable part of a sound wastewater management.
Currently assessment of the potential for
recovery and reuse is among the priority issues
of industrial wastewater management [2]. In this
respect industrial premises manufacturing soft
drinks need special attention as in-plant control
measures can be successfully applied to get an
overall sustainable water management. The reuse
strategies cover a wide range of applications from
reuse of wastewater treatment plant effluents to
recover and reuse of certain segregated wastewater
streams by employing different technologies
such as membrane filtration, ion exchange etc. [3,
4]. In soft drinks industry the segregated wastewater
streams can be subjected to various recovery
and reuse practices by evaluating their level
of contamination. Water reuse from wastewater
streams having low to medium pollutant concentrations
as well as sugar recovery from highly
concentrated streams is of concern [5] yielding
suitable options in terms of financial aspects. On
the other hand costly end-of-pipe treatment alternatives
such as combinations of coagulation flocculation
and activated sludge systems [6] or
anaerobic followed by an aerobic process [7] must
be encountered when in-plant control alternatives
are not considered. This study deals with the management
options of wastewaters originating from
a soft drinks industry having a daily production
capacity of 300 tons of energy drink. The segregated
wastewater streams are characterized to
define possible reuse alternatives, and the pollution
profile together with the effect of such inplant
control measures on the end-of-pipe treatability
is determined.