Brewery Saves 72M Liters of Water Annually with GE Technology

A Portuguese brewery has saved millions of liters of water annually with General Electric’s membranes and water chemical technology.

Sociedade Central de Cervejas e Bebidas (SCC), a brewery in Vialonga near Lisbon, Portugal, reused wastewater to its cooling towers, which enabled it to reduce its yearly water discharge by 72 million liters and reduce its annual fresh water consumption by the same amount. It also increased production performance by 40 percent in the tertiary treatment.

GE has awarded SCC, which is part of the Heineken Group, an ecomagination award to recognize the company for its reductions in fresh water consumption and wastewater discharge.

SCC has some groundwater available at the site, but it was not enough to meet the needs of the brewery. The other option was to use extremely expensive city water. In addition, Portugal is at a high risk of water scarcity over the next decades, so SCC turned to GE to help develop a solution using GE’s advanced water technology.

By using GE’s low-fouling reverse osmosis membranes and advanced chemistry technology, SCC improved tertiary water treatment performance, reducing shutdowns by five times, also contributing to cost savings.

The ecomagination award is part of GE’s ecomagination commitment, which focuses on developing technologies and systems to meet environmental challenges like water scarcity.