Grolsch Brewery - The Netherlands
The Royal Grolsch N.V. has a rich tradition that goes back to the year 1615. The brewery has two production locations - Enchede and Groenlo in the east of The Netherlands. In addition to The Netherlands, where the main activities of the brewery lie, Grolsch is present in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Grolsch only brews beer and is focused on the premium segment of the market. The brewing is centralized and the company slogan “Vakmanschap is Meesterchap”, which translates to “Quality work makes champions,” is key to all of the brewery’s activities.

Grolsch plans to increase the consumption abroad from the current volume of a little more than 1 million hl per year to match the home market volume of approximately 2 million hl per year.

The brewery carries out its activities with an emphasis on safety for workers and the environment. Because of this emphasis on the environment, the brewery has installed its own waste water treatment plant. Due to the fact that the brewery is situated in the centre of Enschede and space is a problem, a relatively compact but very effective WWT plant was built. The plant, however, is sensitive to rapid changes in the load of organic material, and had difficulty coping with “effluent peeks” because of its small buffering capacity.

In Enschede, the BioTector TOC analyzer is used to first detect these “effluent peeks” and secondly to divert flow into the buffer tank. As a result of TOC measurement, Grolsch now has better control of discharge and, in addition to this, has a tool to help even out the load to the WWT plant, and thus will be able operate the plant more effectively, which in the end will increase the company’s bottom line.

The BioTector TOC analyzer is tested in cooperation with Anasys B.V. Grolsch has studied the correlation of the measurement with laboratory COD analysis. They have also tested the operational side of the analyzer, where robustness and interference from inorganic components were important factors. After an extensive test period, the BioTector met the requirements of Grolsch, and was permanently installed in February 1999.

The Application
The BioTector Online TOC Analyzer monitors the waste water directly after the skimmer that separates solid materials from the effluent directed to the waste water plant. The measurement is carried out on unfiltered samples.
From the graph below, a wide variation in the concentration of organic material in the brewery effluent is evident. The COD level varies from approximately 800 mg-O/l to around 5,500 mg-O/l.

To control this effluent effectively and provide the WWT plant with warning of exceptional loads, the analyzer used must be reliable and remain online at all times. An analyzer that works with very accurate analysis in a laboratory test is no good for this type of application if it cannot provide data 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Data availability from the BioTector has proven to be very high, and calculated offline time per year is only approximately 40 hours, including all services and calibrations. This gives 99.5% online data time for the application.

Service intervals are 6 monthly, and consumables (acid, base and oxygen) are refilled every 3 weeks.

View Correlation between COD laboratory results and TOC results measured with the BioTector on-line TOC analyzer.