Technical and financial feasibility of a chemicals recovery and energy and water production from a dairy wastewater treatment plant

Ali Basem; Dheyaa J Jasim; Pooya Ghodratallah; S AbdulAmeer; Ahmed Mohammed Mahmood; Wisam J Khudhayer; Hasan Khalid Dabis; Mohammad Marefati

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-61699-8

Technical and financial feasibility of a chemicals recovery and energy and water production from a dairy wastewater treatment plant

Sci Rep. 2024 May 15;14(1):11143. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-61699-8.

Authors

Ali Basem¹, Dheyaa J Jasim², Pooya Ghodratallah^{3

4}, S AbdulAmeer⁵, Ahmed Mohammed Mahmood⁶, Wisam J Khudhayer⁷, Hasan Khalid Dabis⁸, Mohammad Marefati⁹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Engineering, Warith Al-Anbiyaa University, Karbala, 56001, Iraq.
² Department of Petroleum Engineering, Al-Amarah University College, Maysan, Iraq.
³ Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Cihan University-Erbil, Erbil, Iraq.
⁴ Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Istanbul Okan University, Istanbul, Turkey.
⁵ Department of Automobile Engineering, College of Engineering, Al-Musayab, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq.
⁶ Department of Optical Techniques, Al-Noor University College, Mosul, Iraq.
⁷ Department of Energy Engineering, College of Engineering, Al-Musayab, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq.
⁸ Ahl Al Bayt University, Karbala, Iraq.
⁹ Department of Energy Engineering, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. m.marefati@iaugermi.ac.ir.

Abstract

Due to the high volume of wastewater produced from dairy factories, it is necessary to integrate a water recovery process with the treatment plant. Today, bipolar membrane electrodialysis units (BMEUs) are increasingly developed for wastewater treatment and reutilizing. This article aims to develop and evaluate (technical and cost analyses) a combined BMEU/batch reverse osmosis unit (BROU) process for the recovery of chemicals and water from the dairy wastewater plant. The combined BROU/BMEU process is able to simultaneously produce water and strong base-acid, and reduce power consumption due to the injection of concentrated feed flow into the BMEU. A comprehensive comparative analysis on the performances of two combined and stand-alone BMEU configurations are developed. The proposed combined technology for dairy factory wastewater treatment is designed on a new structure and configuration that can address superior cost analysis compared to similar technologies. Further, the optimal values of permeate flux and current density as two vital and influencing parameters on the performance of the studied dairy wastewater treatment process were calculated and discussed. From the outcomes, the total cost of production in the combined configuration has been reduced by approximately 26% compared to the stand-alone configuration. Increasing the feed concentration rate using the batch reverse osmosis process for the dairy wastewater treatment process can be an ideal solution from an economic point of view. Moreover, point (current density, feed concentration rate, total unit cost) = $(328.9, 7, 14.37)$ can be considered as an optimal point for the economic performance of the studied wastewater treatment process.

Keywords: Chemicals recovery; Dairy wastewater treatment plant; Energy and water production; Financial feasibility; Permeate water flux; Technical assessment.