One of the core principles of Pantarein Water is the circularity of a project. We don’t just want to design and build, we also want to monitor and improve. The collaboration with Brouwerij Westmalle is a wonderful example of this.
Since 2009, the Westmalle brewery and Pantarein have been working together on a project related to wastewater. In the first phase of that project, the existing water treatment plant was upgraded. Pantarein Water optimized the process and conducted a comparative study to evaluate the upgrade. That is also circularity for us: follow-up and evaluation are core principles in our process.
In 2011, Westmalle opted for a new water treatment plant, designed and built by us. It consists of a buffer tank, two parallel bioreactors and an air lift membrane filtration. All basins are covered and the buffer tank is equipped with an odour treatment. The technical parts of the plant are housed in an adjacent building to limit the impact on the environment, both in terms of smell and noise.
In 2016 it was time for the next step in the evolution of the water treatment plant. It was expanded with reverse osmosis to further purify the effluent to drinking water quality, which reduced the brewery's water consumption by 40%. Today you can tap and drink a glass of water directly from the treatment plant. The collaboration between our two companies is still ongoing and we provide a monthly evaluation.