58
PROJECT
Winery recycles
51m litres of water
Napa Valley
winery, Castello
di Amorosa.
By
Ann K Ryan | Crystal Komanchuk | Jennifer Cisneros of BioMicrobics
A solution was found talking to BioMicrobics, based
in the US, but having two distributors in South
Africa. Plumbing Africa met with the company when
they exhibited at PLUMBDRAIN Africa 2018.
“The owner of the winery is very conscious about
conserving natural resources on the property. A major
drought in 2014 led us to be proactive and look for a
replacement system that would save water,” says Tim
Dexter, maintenance manager at Castello di Amorosa.
The winery’s environmental values led to a search
for the best treatment-system science, design, and
tank material.
“Corrosion-resistant fibreglass tanks provide an
advantage in the winery’s acidic soil,” says Dexter.
The entire system
at a glance.
Three ZCL | Xerxes 83 000ℓ fibreglass water tanks
replaced the previous concrete tanks. A BioMicrobics
BioBarrier® HSMBR® (High-Strength Membrane
Bioreactor) treatment system is installed inside each tank.
Placed inside the ends of the tanks, the aeration grids
below the membrane modules promote aerobic microbes
that metabolise and digest the wastewater and then
passes through the membranes for ultrafiltration. The
treated water is then 99.9% removed of the contaminants
and discharges out of the ZCL | Xerxes Tank.
CUSTOM SYSTEM MEETS VARYING NEEDS OF WINERY
“A major advantage of pairing ZCL | Xerxes tanks with
the BioMicrobics treatment system is that together,
they are scalable and modular. We can create a
system that meets a winery’s needs,” says Sheldon
Sapoznik, owner of Wine to Water Sales Group and a
representative for BioMicrobics’ winery wastewater
treatment systems.
“Each tank operates independently to meet the winery’s
water needs, which can vary significantly day to day.
During the most water-intensive times — when wine
is bottled, and barrels are washed — all three tank
systems run, treating up to 34 000ℓ of water per day.
A whole day’s water flow may go in and out of the
three tanks in less than an hour. That level of flow
requires surge protection for a high volume of flow so
the treatment process isn’t interrupted. Our tanks are
designed to meet this need,” says Sapoznik.
OVER 51M LITRES OF WATER TREATED AND
REUSED IN FIRST YEAR
The BioBarrier system’s flat-sheet membranes (.03 to
1.3 micron pores) physically separates the solids and
bacteria from wastewater to keep them in the tank,
allowing the treated water (high-quality effluent) to exit
the tanks using a small submerged filtrate pump. The
resulting clean water can be reused in numerous ways,
including vineyard irrigation.
“In our first year of operation, ending in May 2018,
the winery treated and reused 1.35 million gallons of
water. That’s the amount of water we would have had to
source from somewhere else. Our water now has two life
cycles,” says Dexter.
Both the winery and land have recently been Napa
Green-certified, which means they meet all the regulatory
components needed for environmental sustainability,
including water conservation and water efficiency.
October 2018 Volume 24 I Number 8
www.plumbingafrica.co.za