FDT won the Gold Award and nominated Koch Membrane Systems as deserving much of the credit for the achievement. The Green Apple Environment Awards is an international campaign to find the greenest companies, councils and communities. They competed against more than 500 other nominations and were presented with their Green Apple Award at a presentation ceremony in the House of Commons, London on November 14th 2012. The award was for FDT’s ‘Recovery & Reuse of Water and Carbon Dioxide from Industrial Waste Streams’ project, part-funded by the Cleaner Greener Production Programme of EPA, Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency. Six facilities from the brewing, dairy ingredients, liquid milk, snack foods and pharmaceutical industries were examined and the potential for recovery and reuse of water and carbon dioxide was assessed. The results were then extrapolated across similar facilities in each industry to quantify the potential for recovering water and carbon dioxide in Irish industry as a whole. From the facilities examined, four opportunities for water recovery and reuse using membrane filtration were identified as being financially viable. FDT used a KMS Laboratory Cell CF-1 membrane test unit to conduct the program of membrane pilot trials. Using KMS UF, NF and RO membranes a series of industrial waste streams samples were processed through the unit. The KMS Laboratory Cell CF-1 membrane test unit allows selecting the most promising membrane by simulating process conditions. It is a very simple and effective tool for carrying out process evaluation for ultimate proof of concept determination by using microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis flat sheet test pads. The integral assembly is ready for operation on a laboratory bench or fume hood environment. During the membrane pilots KMS assisted FDT with the initial setup of the unit and provided recommendations for membrane operation, cleaning and trial data interpretation. Previously KMS and FDT have worked closely together on several recovery and reuse applications, one such project at Diageo Dundalk Brewery Ireland resulted in the supply of a nanofiltration membrane system by KMS for the recovery of spent CIP liquors. Following installation the system gave a payback after only 20 months operation.
