Water, wastewater and waste management in brewing industries

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. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.