Pepsi plant to cut fresh water use by 70%

Nuremberg, Germany - PepsiCo has installed advanced water reuse technology as part of a wastewater treatment plant upgrade at a snack food production plant in Santiago, Chile.

The integrated system - from Siemens’ industry automation division - is intended to lower the use of fresh water used in making potato chips and other snack food lines by up to 70%.

The Siemens kit employs a membrane bioreactor (MBR) system to separate and treat liquids and solids. Water will be saved by taking the initial water used in production, extracting the impurities and cycling it back into the production systems.

Wastewater treated by the new system will be reused in various internal manufacturing processes. The installation is part of a corporate initiative to help standardise water reuse at PepsiCo facilities throughout South America.

At the Santiago facility, most of the wastewater first passes through an extensive starch recovery system and is then screened before it moves on to primary treatment, which includes oil and grease removal. After this stage, it will flow to the MBR system to separate and treat liquids and solids.

A remote supervision system will allow MBR performance parameters to be monitored online from Siemens’ technology center in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

From the MBR, the water will be pretreated before it passes through tertiary treatment, including a reverse-osmosis (RO) system and a UV disinfection system, both also from Siemens.

According to the supplier, increasingly stringent local regulations, coupled with green initiatives, might make the RO/MBR technology combination more prevalent in PepsiCo’s processes in the future.