Increasing water production to enable 24/7 Brewing.
Challenge
Broken Hill has relied on the Menindee Lakes as the town’s main water supply since the 1960’s. The Menindee Lakes is a chain of shallow ephemeral freshwater lakes connected to the Darling River to form a storage system.
In late 2015, due to the drought conditions in the Darling system the capacity of the lake system was close to empty.
This not only limits supply of water but also impact on the quality of water which deteriorates (salinity increases) due to the high evaporation rate. Under these conditions, Broken Hill’s Water Treatment Plant, designed to remove turbidity and organic matter using conventional filtration process, requires an upgrade with the reverse osmosis process to remove the excess salinity.
Therefore the requirement for an RO plant arose, which required completion in a very short time frame - 12 weeks, very careful installation and integration with the continuously operating upstream water filtration plant, along with numerous procedures and measures to comply with from the NSW Public Works who managed the overall project on behalf of Essential Water, the owner and operator of the Broken Hill WTP.
The new RO plant was required to be integrated with the existing water treatment facility on site - successful integration would require close management of the equipment interfaces.
With a 12 week time frame, the project was completed in a very short time frame to all required standards set out by the NSW Public Works.
Challenge
Pirate Life Brewing were restricted to batching their brew cycles due to insufficient permeate water supply from their reverse osmosis plant. Osmoflo were engaged to supply operation and maintenance to the RO plant to address the poor performance and reliability issues. During the assessment of the plant in the initial period of O&M activities, Osmoflo proposed an upgrade to the system to increase capacity and availability.
Solution
During the assessment of the plant in the initial period of O&M activities, Osmoflo proposed an upgrade to the system to increase capacity and availability. In 2022, Osmoflo completed this upgrade to the RO plantto increase daily capacity from 160kL to 240kL. This increased capacity assisted in bringing the breweries’ future management decision to operate 24/7, increasing the output of product. In 2025 after 3 years of reliable operation, Osmoflo provided Pirate Life with the opportunity to reduce energy consumption and the membrane cleaning frequency of the reverse osmosis equipment. Osmoflo's exclusive membrane technology partner AquaMembranes have an innovative reverse osmosis membrane AM-BW505-ECO1.0elements featuring patented printed spacer technology has proven to be able to achieve this solution.
Result
With a focus on sustainability for the future, the use of groundwater instead of mains water is resulting in net savings for Coopers, while the use of reject water for irrigation is also reducing the cost of effluent discharge. We also offered Coopers a ‘Build Own Operate’ arrangement whereby Osmoflo owns and operates the RO plant, and the brewery is billed on consumption. Under this scheme, we have the responsibility of providing water to the required standard, while Coopers can concentrate on what it does best – brewing high-quality beers.
Other solutions
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