Location: Glenmorangie Distillery. Tain, Scotland
OEM: Aquabio Ltd.
Application: AnMBR
Capacity: 467 m3/day (expanded to 600 m³/day)
COD Feed: Average 30,000 mg COD/L
Membrane: 8 mm, PVDF, backwashable
Whisky production generates highly concentrated organic wastewater with variable characteristics, requiring careful flow management, process stability, and consistent treatment performance. Glenmorangie needed a solution that could accommodate a peak AnMBR treatment volume of 467 m³/day, with capacity for future expansion to 600 m³/day, and manage a design COD load of 14,527 kg/day.
Beyond regulatory compliance, the distillery wanted to reduce operational costs by using recovered biogas as low-cost energy for the whisky-making process. The treatment plant therefore had to combine high COD and BOD removal, flexibility under variable operating conditions, and a high degree of automation with remote monitoring.
Aquabio delivered a turnkey mechanical and electrical solution commissioned in Autumn 2016. The plant includes inlet works, screening, balance and divert tanks, an anaerobic bioreactor, a low-energy tubular ultrafiltration system, and a biogas energy management system with a biogas boiler. The system is fully automated and equipped for remote monitoring, enabling stable operation and efficient process control.
The distillery effluent is pretreated using a 0.25 mm wedge wire rotary drum before passing through a monitoring tank fitted with probes for pH, ORP, and temperature. In-spec wastewater is directed to two 150 m³ equalization tanks, while out-of-spec streams are diverted to a 140 m³ tank and gradually blended back into the process to protect downstream anaerobic treatment.
Feedwater is heated to 35–40 °C before entering a 2,100 m³ anaerobic reactor. Waste heat from the distillery supports both reactor and feedstock heating. The reactor mixed liquor is jet-mixed, and the generated biogas is cleaned and combusted in a biogas boiler. Biological sludge is treated in a sidestream tubular UF system comprising four loops of seven 10-inch, 4 m Berghof membrane modules, allowing membrane loops to be brought online or offline according to influent flow.
The AnMBR plant achieved the project’s overall performance targets, removing more than 95 % of influent COD and at least 98 % of BOD. It generates approximately 8,000 Nm³ of biogas per day, producing around 2,500 kg/h of steam and covering approximately 20 % of the energy demand of the whisky-making process. Treated UF permeate is safely discharged into the Dornoch Firth under license, while the nutrient-rich residual solid stream is reused locally as fertilizer for grassland fields.
| Parameters | Required Effluent |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 467 m³/day (expanded to 600 m³/day) |
| Design COD load | 14,527 kg/day |
| COD removal | ≥ 95 % |
| BOD removal | ≥ 98 % |
| Biogas generation | 8,000 Nm³/day |
| Steam generation | 2,500 kg/h (F + A) |
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