Cleaner Production: New Technology for Water Recycling and Cleaner Production

Abstract

Recent projects investigating winery wastewater have identified a number of new technologies that may help to reduce or recycle wastewater and ensure wine is produced cleanly. An industry survey was performed to gather a list of potential technologies which might lead to cleaner production methods. In total, this approach covered approximately 70% of Australian production by volume.

Summary

Waste minimisation is slowly being adopted in the wine industry, owing to a combination of powerful drivers, which are either internally or externally motivated. However, these waste minimisation practices in the wine industry are still carried out in an ad hoc fashion and have proven to be ineffective in many cases. The lack of a systematic methodology of synthesising and targeting specific waste streams by the industry has been identified as a major cause of failure in realising the full potential of waste minimisation in the wine industry. Recent projects investigating winery wastewater have identified a number of new technologies that may help to reduce or recycle wastewater and ensure wine is produced cleanly. This project tested and demonstrated these technologies and deployed case studies within industry to facilitate their uptake. In order to identify potential strategies and cleaner production technologies which might be suitable for the Australia wine Industry an extensive survey process was completed using two approaches: An online survey – primarily aimed at small to medium sized producers; and Personal visits to various wine producing companies – targeted more at large producers.