Program Book - Master Brewers Association of the Americas

P-106
Availability and quality of water: Addressing future problems
with modern water treatment technologies
MICHAEL EUMANN (1)
(1) EUWA H. H. Eumann GmbH, Gärtringen, Germany
It is generally known that the access to fresh water in sufficient
quality and quantity is poor in some parts of the world. Lack of
decent well water forces humanity to look for other sources, like
surface water. As surface water quality in general is much more
influenced by humans and subject to seasonal changes, new
challenges have to be met by water treatment technology. This
tendency has gripped the food and beverage industries as well,
where sometimes the supply of water has already become the
crucial location factor. This presentation describes a new approach
for dealing with surface water in brewing by means of an example
of a brewery located on the banks of Lake Victoria in Africa. The
brewery sources its water directly out of Lake Victoria and was
formerly treated with sand filters, removing parts of turbidity and
organics. Due to intense human usage, water levels have dropped
in recent years. In parallel, water quality deteriorated, especially
during rainfall, making it impossible to provide decent water
quality from the existent water treatment plant. The approach
was to use ultrafiltration instead of sand filters. The advantages
of ultrafiltration are the complete removal of particles/turbidity
and bacteria as well as viruses. Therefore ultrafiltration forms
an effective germ barrier, which is essential for the food industry
and may be reached naturally only by filtration through different
soil layers over a decent period of time. Before commissioning,
intensive pilot trials over a period of six months were carried
out in order to determine the optimized operation and cleaning
procedures as well as the yield of the plant. Results of the piloting
will be presented. Surface waters generally possess low hardness,
which makes it necessary to add non carbonate hardness in order
to adapt the ionic composition of the water for brewing purposes
and a client’s specifications as well. Therefore further treatment
consists of a CALMIX® plant, which forms CaCl 2 and CaSO 4 in
totally dissolved form out of lime, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric
acid. The combination of ultrafiltration with CALMIX® proved
to be a very cost effective solution for the conditioning of heavily
used surface water to brew water. Operation data from the largescale
water treatment plant will be presented in detail. It shows how
future problems like the usage of surface waters for food production
may be addressed using modern water treatment techniques. The
adoption of new water treatment techniques will play a key role in
technologies.
Michael Eumann, born in 1963, is the owner of EUWA Water
Treatment Plants, which he joined in 1987. EUWA has two
subsidiaries in Asia and customers in more than 80 countries on five
continents.
P-107
Biofouling and process cleaning: A practical approach to
understanding what’s happening on the walls of your pipes
MARK FORNALIK (1)
(1) Ethox International, Rush, NY
Biofouling is a ubiquitous problem to a great many industrial
processes, including brewing and other industrial fermentation
processes. Biofouling in process equipment and water systems can
lead to product quality incidents as well as process problems. In
spite of their widespread presence in industrial systems, biofilms
can be difficult to detect and even more difficult to control.
Biofouling control in industrial systems is linked strongly to the
biofilm’s exopolymer, which in turn is influenced by product
chemistry, system design, system hydraulics and cleaning process
parameters. This paper describes a practical approach to detecting,
characterizing and controlling biofouling in brewing and other fullscale
fermentation processes.
Mark Fornalik joined Ethox International in May 2007 as director
of biofouling science. Prior to joining Ethox, Fornalik worked for 22
years at Eastman Kodak Company, where he headed a 12-person
group dedicated to detecting, characterizing, and controlling
biological and chemical contamination problems in Kodak’s global
liquid transfer systems. At Kodak, Fornalik also led a successful
product development project using silver as an antimicrobial.
Fornalik holds a M.S. degree in biophysics from SUNY/Buffalo, with
a thesis on the impact of substrate surface chemical properties on the
initial stages of dental plaque formation.
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