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Dairy Industry Wastewater Treatment

Producing milk, butter, cheese, or yoghurt, using pasteurization or homogenization produces wastewater with high levels of BOD and COD loads and must be reduced before being discharged to municipal treatment facilities. Typical by-products include buttermilk, whey, and their derivatives. Large amounts of water are used during the process producing effluents containing dissolved sugars and proteins, fats, and possibly residues of additives.

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Ecologix DAF for dairy wastewater treatment
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Client testimonial

“We have been very satisfied with the overall install and operational performance of our Ecologix DAF. By far it is the most simple to use and automated DAF system that we have encountered on the market. Ecologix provided an economical turnkey system that has exceeded expectations.”
Aaron Riedell, Vice President of Operations at Revela Foods

Revela Foods is a diversified food ingredients and processed foods company. Ecologix Environmental Systems supported its wastewater treatment operations for solids and other contaminants from cheese dairy production with an Enhanced Dissolved Air Flotation (E-DAF) system.

Dairy plant conditions

Typical dairy plant effluent can include:

  • Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) averaging 0.8–2.5 kilograms per metric ton of milk in untreated effluent
  • Chemical oxygen demand (COD), normally about 1.5 times the BOD level
  • Total suspended solids (TSS) of 100–1,000 mg/L
  • Total dissolved solids, phosphorus of 10–100 mg/L, and nitrogen at about 6% of the BOD level

Cream, butter, cheese, and whey production are major sources of BOD. The waste-load equivalents of specific milk constituents are:

  • 1 kg of milk fat = 3 kg COD
  • 1 kg of lactose = 1.13 kg COD
  • 1 kg of protein = 1.36 kg COD

Dairy wastewater treatment and reuse

Wastewater may contain pathogens from contaminated materials or production processes. Dairy operations can also generate odors and, in some cases, dust that require control.

Ecologix designs complete wastewater treatment and odor-control solutions. Options include optimizing water and cleaning chemical use, segregating processing and cooling effluents to support reuse, energy recovery through heat exchangers, and high-pressure nozzles to reduce water usage.

Wastewater reuse can incorporate adsorption and membrane separation. Activated carbon can remove color and odor, after which pretreated water can pass through a cross-flow reverse osmosis membrane system for reuse.

Explore Ecologix dissolved air flotation systems and MBBR systems for dairy wastewater treatment.

Process diagram for dairy wastewater treatment