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Brewery Wastewater BOD values

By March 24, 2015May 9th, 2019Lab stuff, Treatment

Here is a table with some typical brewery wastewater BOD values, as well as COD, TSS, and pH.  Sorry for the weird format, there is a lot of data here.

pH COD, mg/L *BOD, mg/L TSS, mg/L Generalizations
Low High Low High Low High
Wort 5.5 250,000 400,000 150,000 240,000 Darker ales at the high end, lighter lagers at the low end
Beer 4.5 125,000 300,000 75,000 180,000 Darker ales at the high end, lighter lagers at the low end
Trub See sidestream below
Yeast 4.5 120,000 200,000 72,000 120,000 60,000 100,000 Autolysed yeast is about the same
Propylene glycol 7 600,000 360,000 Varies with concentration, but you get the point, very, very high!
Label glue 50,000 30,000
Defoamer 700,000 420,000 Sometimes used in fermenter blow off buckets
 
Brewery wastewater without sidestreaming 4.5 4,000 17,000 2,400 10,200 1,500 8,000
Brewery wastewater with sidestreaming 4.5 1,800 9,000 1,080 5,400 400 1,000 CIP, packaging, rinsing, general wash down water
Side stream wastewater 4.5 5,000 40,000 3,000 24,000 200 7,000 This is spent yeast, trub, waste beer, etc.
Domestic wastewater 7 210 1,100 100 500 20 300 Most municipal treatment plants are designed for wastewater like this

Understand this can vary quite a bit from brewery to brewery, but this will give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here.

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