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Sweet Nothings: BioViper Strips Sugar from Wastewater at Dr. Pepper Snapple Plant
Green Technology Featured Articles
March 06, 2013

Sweet Nothings: BioViper Strips Sugar from Wastewater at Dr. Pepper Snapple Plant

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

Wastewater discharged from beverage plants is full of a major contaminant – sugar, and lots of it – coming from diluted syrup and product beverages. These high-pollutant loads increase the cost of water treatment.

The Dr. Pepper Snapple (DPS) Group – which in addition to its eponymous brands, produces such popular beverages as 7UP, A&W, Canada Dry, Hawaiian Punch, Mott's, Schweppes and Sunkist soda – has long experience with this problem.


Now, the Santa Barbara, California-based Baswood Corporation is offering an advanced pretreatment solution that involves minimal operating costs and reduces energy consumption, compared to other options.

The innovative system, the BioViper, has begun full-scale operations at the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Houston bottling plant.

The BioViper delivers an energy-efficient pretreatment solution that significantly lowers the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) – the amount of oxygen required by aerobic microorganisms to decompose the organic matter in a sample of water – in the bottling plant’s facility’s effluent, while supporting DPS’s environmental sustainability goals.

With digestion rates of 75 to 90 percent, the BioViper provides a reduction in the plant’s organic loading, which allows DPS to minimize its burden on the City of Houston wastewater treatment operations, increasing the city’s capacity to treat wastewater from other industrial customers.

The Baswood technology was developed and patented by Paul Baskis, a microbiologist and inventor, who studied rivers and saw how bacteria worked in different aeration environments. Based on these studies, Baskis designed an approach to wastewater treatment that replicated the efficient and effective processes that occur in a natural environment.

‘Star Treatment’

Baswood's Chairman of the Board, actor Edward Norton, is the United Nations Ambassador for Biodiversity, a trustee of Conservation International, a member of the TEEB Advisory Council, and a longtime advocate for sustainable technologies.

For years, Norton has had an interest in efficient, modular wastewater treatment solutions that has grown from his work in the developing world – and he was a founding investor in Baswood in 2004. 

He has been on the company’s board since 2007 and became chairman in 2008.

“Baswood’s water treatment technology represents an authentic paradigm shift across the whole spectrum of needs, from industrial pre-treatment to primary municipal treatment to the most demanding tertiary sludge reduction,” said Norton. “It hits the trifecta of better performance, lower energy use and modular scalability and it offers highly flexible solutions for all scenarios – from rural communities in developing countries all the way up to the largest municipal and industrial water treatment facilities. Dr. Pepper Snapple’s installation of the Baswood technology is a great example of how industry can be a leader in promoting cost-effective innovations that improve the bottom line, lower the public cost burden, and protect the sustainability of our most vital resources.”

A Smaller Footprint 

The proprietary BioViper system requires 40 percent less energy to operate than traditional digestion. In addition to a smaller carbon footprint, the BioViper occupies a small physical footprint, which enabled the DPS pretreatment facility to be built within the company’s existing property boundaries.

The modular and scalable system can expand if additional capacity is required for the plant’s bottling operations.

“Baswood’s BioViper system reduces both cost and our impact on the environment and public resources,” said Kendall Yorn, senior vice president of Manufacturing and Engineering for DPS. “Clean water is in everyone’s interest, and this new technology is a major step forward in our commitment to finding sustainable solutions that positively affect our community.”

The BioViper is based on the patented Aerobic/Anaerobic Integrated Media System (AIMS), which maximizes biological treatment efficiency using Baswood’s Dry Cycle Aerobic/Anaerobic Digestion (DCAD) technology. As wastewater passes through distinct treatment zones within the system, sequential treatment results in accelerated digestion of organic wastes, virtually odor free.

The BioViper achieves treatment goals with a reduced hydraulic retention and increased solids retention, resulting in lower horsepower demands; is internally self-buffering, reducing the need for costly chemicals – and uses Baswood’s proprietary control system, requiring minimal operator oversight.

“All of us at Baswood are proud that our wastewater treatment technology is making a significant contribution not only to DPS’s sustainability initiatives, but also to its bottom line,” said CEO Michael Walker. “Our system’s modular, efficient solution significantly lowers the cost of wastewater pretreatment, which enables our customers, regardless of their size, to gain a rapid return on their investment.”




Edited by Braden Becker


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