Assessment and modeling of effluent quality, economic benefits, and greenhouse gas reduction for receiving brewery wastewater on A2O by GPS- X

Recently, breweries have been allowed to discharge brewery wastewater (BWW) to the sewage pipe network to alle-viate the shortage of carbon sources of municipal wastewater treatment plants (MWTPs) under the premise of signing a contract with MWTPs in some countries. This study aims to provide a model-based method for MWTPs to evaluate the threshold, the effluent risk, the economic benefits, and the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction of re-ceiving BWW. In this research, a simulation model of an anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process (A2O) receiving BWW was es-tablished based on the data of a real MWTP and brewery using GPS-X. The sensitivity factors of 189 parameters were analyzed, and several sensitive parameters were calibrated stably and dynamically. By analyzing the errors and stan-dardized residuals, the calibrated model was proved to be high-quality and reliable. In the next phase, the impact of receiving BWW on the A2O was evaluated in terms of effluent quality, economic benefits, and GHG emissions reduc-tion. The results showed that receiving a certain amount of BWW can effectively reduce the carbon source cost and GHG emissions for the MWTP compared with adding methanol. Though the chemical oxygen demand (COD), bio-chemical oxygen demand in five days (BOD5), and total nitrogen (TN) in the effluent increased in various degrees, the effluent quality still met the discharge standard implemented by the MWTP. The study can also facilitate the modeling work for many researchers and promote more kinds of food production wastewater to be treated equally.

Automated summary

Recently, breweries have been allowed to discharge brewery wastewater (BWW) to the sewage pipe network to alleviate the shortage of carbon sources for municipal wastewater treatment plants (MWTPs) in some countries. This study provides a model-based method for MWTPs to evaluate the impact of receiving BWW, including the threshold, effluent risk, economic benefits, and potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction. By analyzing 189 parameters, a simulation model of an anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process (A2O) receiving BWW was established and calibrated to be of high-quality and reliable. The evaluation showed that receiving a certain amount of BWW can effectively reduce carbon source cost and GHG emissions for MWTPs while still meeting discharge standards.