Glanbia Overview

Glanbia - Overview

The BioTector 970 gives Virtual On-Line COD with six installations in Glanbia.

  • ISO 14001 awarded to Glanbia plc for environmental excellence
  • Application ranges from 50mg cod to over 50000mg cod
  • On-line time >99% for all applications
  • Low maintenance requirements even on high fat lines

General Background
Glanbia plc, Ballyragget, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland
The traditional methods for measuring dairy effluent strength have been the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD). Both methods, however, require time to give their results. BOD analysis requires 5 days and COD analysis at best takes a few hours. A further disadvantage of the COD method is that every COD sample results in hazardous waste.

At Glanbia plc, the need for continuous on-line monitoring to control the level of losses due to spillage in their dairy plant prompted the decision to replace the traditional methods with TOC analysis.

Application Description
Six BioTector 970’s are currently installed in the Glanbia dairy plant: Three units are used to monitor the fallout from the milk processing plants, one unit to measure the waste loading of the bio-tower and two units are used to monitor final effluent.

Excellent COD correlations have been obtained from each of the four waste monitoring BioTectors installed at Glanbia plc. On average, the COD to TOC correlation factor for untreated dairy waste is 2.99. (Details on following page).

To quote Eamon Ryan, Asst. Environmental Manager at Glanbia plc: “Having established the conversion factor to bring TOC to COD we virtually had on-line COD and this information could be fed back to a PC in the central control room...Operators would monitor spillage rates and set a target in line with acceptable losses... At the whey processing plant alone, reductions were above expectations with an average decrease of 37% being achieved”.

“While the benefits include better solids recovery, energy savings and reduction of waste, it has also relieved pressure on the treatment plant“.