The process of making wine requires a lot of water — the rough estimate among industry players is about a 6:1 ratio — and thus results in a lot of wastewater.
Ballentine Vineyards is one of the Napa Valley wineries with their own on-site moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) wastewater treatment system. Sam Jones, Register
Napa Valley Wineries Use On-Site Wastewater Treatment Systems to Irrigate Vineyards
Oct 18, 2021 at 2:45pm
So in a place that seems to be in an eternal state of drought, winery owners and vineyard operators want to make the most out of their waste, turning the sludgy offshoot into clean water for irrigating the fields.
Many Napa Valley wineries, therefore, have adopted their own on-site wastewater treatment systems to turn production waste into means of irrigating their vines.
Different systems exist to treat the pulpy, thick and already-used wastewater, with a handful of different types of tech here in Napa Valley keeping notable vineyards quenched. Regardless of the specific type, though, most on-site winery wastewater systems have a few basic commonalities, the first being expense.
Beyond that, each system does whatever it can to neutralize the pH, or acidity, of wastewater and get it to the point where it can be put back out into the watershed via irrigation, or in certain cases, can be pumped back into the sewer system.
One such system is a moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR). An MBBR system uses activated sludge and little plastic biochips to treat wastewater and is relatively common here in Napa Valley. The primary tanks in the MBBR system largely rid the water of thicker materials, and eventually land either in an aeration tank or the sludge reservoir.
Eventually, the clear(er) water makes it to an aeration tank with biochips that look like tiny plastic rotelle pasta. The biochips then attract and increase the volume of microorganisms in the tank, which then consume the unwanted organic materials in the water before being clarified and disinfected.
Ballentine Vineyards is one of the Napa Valley wineries that has an on-site MBBR system, and winemaker Bruce Devlin has found himself as the tanks’ personal mechanic.
“We had this installed about three years ago, [and] about 7,000 gallons of water run through the system a day,” said Devlin. “When you put the system in there are management options, so different levels of service, and we went with no service so I am the one managing it.”
Devlin has made adjustments since taking over the tanks, but most of the controls and maintenance mean replacing sensors, pumps, and monitoring the screen that he refers to as “The Brain.” On this small, digitized screen, you can see a real-time visualization of how full each tank is in the system.
Continue reading the article from the Napa Valley Register here.