Using chitosan as a coagulant in recovery of organic matters from the mash and lauter wastewater of brewery

Chitosan is a natural biopolymer which can be used to replace aluminum salts and chemical polymers as a coagulant to avoid the human health problems caused by the residual of aluminum and chemical polymers in water. Chitin is a major component in shrimp and crab shells, and chitosan can be produced from chitin via a deacetylated process. Since the biodegradation of chitin is very slow, large amount of discards from the processing of crustaceans has become a major concern in seafood industry. Therefore, more works are need to find the possible applications of chitin, chitosan and their derivatives. This research used chitosan as a coagulant to recover wheat dregs in the wastewater from washing the mash and the lauter unit in a brewery, and regards this study as an example to understand the influences of the characters of the wastewater on the treatment plant of brewery. The result shows that the wastewater from the mash and the lauter units can have the best treatment efficiency at the coagulant dosage of 120 mg/L in the original pH 4.5. Increasing the solution pH decreased the turbidity removal efficiency. The dominant mechanisms for chitosan to remove colloids in the wastewater are charge bridging and neutralization, and the later becomes less significant in the high pH. The coagulant of chitosan removed most of the colloidal form organic matter in the wastewater, but it has only little effect on the removal of dissolving organic matter. Chitosan is a natural material, after coagulation the sludge from the mash and lauter wastewater can serve directly as an animal husbandry fodder after been dehydrated. Therefore, the loading to wastewater treatment plant and the cost of treatment could be reduced.