Glen Moray Distillery

The Challenge

We understand that distilleries face logistical and financial challenges associated with the processing and treatment of distillery co-products to ensure compliance with discharge consent parameters.

SEM’s challenge was to demonstrate understanding of the complex chemistry involved, and that our technology could successfully process the distillery spent lees and washing waters (SL&WW) to reduce the copper and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) to within standard compliance levels.

The Result

The average reduction in copper over the entire trial period was an impressive 80.6% and he average in COD was 28.6%.

As well as reducing the process copper and COD levels, the clarity of effluent after treatment was significantly improved. The SEM unit also demonstrated that it was able to treat high variability within the mixed co-products stream, i.e. volume fluctuations in line with batch processing and cleaning.

A total of 262.25m3 of SL&WW were processed through the SEM unit over a 58h operating period equating to 4.60m3/h.

These results show an 88% reduction of copper and 30% reduction in COD post treatment.

The Solution

A nine day on-line was conducted using our custom-built treatment technology to process the SL&WW live from the distillery process. The SEM unit was installed at the distillery and processing began within the same shift. The integration of the unit with the existing distillery process resulted in no impact on operations due to its minimal footprint and simple interface requirements.

The copper and COD concentrations pre and post treatment were monitored on a continual basis in order to control the most efficient chemical additions and ensure consistent performance of the treatment system.

A total of 570 litres (0.57m3) of chemicals were used to process the 268.25m3 of SL&WW. Verification samples were sent back to the SEM laboratory in Colpy, Aberdeenshire and a third party UKAS accredited laboratory for further analysis.