Food and Beverage companies deliver valuable products to the general public. It is something we cannot live without. To ensue the protection of public health it is important for the companies to deliver a safe product that the consumer trusts. Breaking that trust is costly to their business. Recently a large dairy producer in Canada issued a recall due to a sanitizer contamination in their milk products.
Food and beverage producers will generate wastewater in their production and cleaning processes. This wastewater is usually monitored for Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), total suspended solids and pH. A permit with limits for all these parameters is normally issued to the company. The local utility or environmental authority will have random sampling intervals to check that the wastewater effluent is meeting discharge limits. A challenge for the producer is that the BOD test takes 5 days to complete. As a result, food and beverage companies will often utilize the chemical oxygen demand (COD) surrogate method to have results in 3 hours. The traditional COD method uses the hazardous chemicals chromium, mercury and concentrated acid. Unfortunately, these chemicals have the potential to get into the products ultimately purchased and consumed by the public, exactly as happened at the dairy processor.
Is there a way to prevent this? YES!
PeCOD replaces the traditional COD testing method, utilizing a green and safe method, hence eliminating the use of hazardous chemicals. PeCOD also provides a strong correlation to BOD. PeCOD generates results in 10 minutes, thereby providing an additional advantage through a fast test results. It is one of the reasons Flying Monkeys Brewery invested in the PeCOD. Flying Monkeys is a growing craft brewery with a wastewater discharge permit. The BOD 5 day method took too long and slowed down production, therefore, they required a method to measure wastewater BOD quickly. They learned of the traditional COD method, but quickly discarded the idea once they learned of the chemicals. The potential to contaminate product was a significant concern. The priority is to protect their product and maintain consumer trust. The PeCOD COD analyzer was the solution. Now production is optimized and PeCOD fits the green, local and sustainable mantra so often branded by Craft Brewers.
“The real solution to BOD testing is PeCOD”
Robert Menegotto, CEO, MANTECH
MANTECH’s primary mission is to “Optimize your Results and Protect our Environment” We can add Protect Profits and Public Health as well. The MANTECH PeCOD Analyzer and impact meets the mission goals.