Dufftown Distillery

Constructed Wetlands: Groundwater Treatment Plants (GWT)

Created at: 25 Aug 2016

Description

Need <br>Dufftown Distillery, owned by Diageo, produces 4million litres of whisky per year. The distillery generates an effluentcontaining a significant amount of copper that is scoured from the stillsduring the distillation process and cleaning operations. As Dufftown is locatedin a remote area and lacks access to mains drainage, wastewater from thedistillation process is sent to the on-site effluent treatment plant (bioplant)for treatment before being discharged under consent in to the River Dullan. Thewastewater treated at the bioplant comes from three distilleries. It is pumpedfrom the Dufftown Distillery and arrives in road tankers from Mortlach andGlendullan distilleries for treatment. The average flow to the bioplant is 650m3/d with an average soluble copper levelof approximately 1.5 mg/l at the discharge point. With increasing restrictionson maximum consent values, Diageo required a final polishing stage to reducethe copper concentration to below 0.5 mg/l prior to discharge to the RiverDullan. <br><br>Solution <br>ARM designed and constructed an 800m2 horizontal surface flow reed bed treatmentsystem to remove soluble copper from distillery wastewater. The system has agravel substrate planted with Typha latifolia. Unlike organicpollutants, heavy metals are not degraded in biological processes, but they canbe accumulated within the wetland using a variety of removal mechanismsincluding adsorption, cation exchange and chelation with organic matter andsediments, adsorption to plant surfaces, uptake by plants and precipitation assulphides and carbonates.

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