Better rinse water quality and high cost savings in painting-pretreatment at Umdasch thanks to efficient wastewater treatment

An excellent surface coating quality is the basis for many innovative products. It depends to a large extent on the cleaning process and the quality of the rinsing water before coating. Hence cleaning and pre-treatment are playing an increasingly important role in surface technology. Modern, economical wastewater treatment methods, such as vacuum distillation, meet the high demands on both rinsing water quality and economics . An excellent example of this process is provided by Umdasch The Store Makers GmbH in Leibnitz, Styria.

Under the roof of the Umdasch Group, with its headquarters in Amstetten, there are three subsidiaries with numerous locations worldwide. Doka, Umdasch Group Ventures and Umdasch The Store Makers.

Umdasch The Store Makers Leibnitz GmbH offers holistic shopfitting solutions for customers in the food and non-food retail business and accompanies them from planning to production and implementation of the furnishings. A wide variety of industrial wastewater is produced during the process.

Location of the VACUDEST: Leibnitz, Austria
Sector: Food and non-food retail business
Industrial wastewater produced: rinsing water from painting pre-treatment

What our customer says

"Thanks to the excellent results in terms of conductivity, the distillate can be reused 1:1 and does not have to be retreated again - that convinced us!"

Initial situation

In almost all areas of metalworking, the components and the processing machines are lubricated and cooled with emulsions or coolants. These residues left over from machining are anything but conducive to a durable coating and a long service life of these parts. Therefore, they must be removed thoroughly before surface finishing. Contaminated rinse water is produced at this point, which cannot be discharged into the public sewage system. The disposal results in high costs, which add up to considerable amounts over the course of a year.

This was also the case at Umdasch The Store Makers GmbH in Leibnitz in southern Styria. The washing water produced in the degreasing, pre-treatment and cleaning processes has a high content of dissolved fats and oils (COD >10,000 mg/l) as well as some chlorides and organic acids. It usually has to be disposed of for about €135 per m³. With a process water volume of approx. 1,500 m³ per year, this results in enormous disposal costs of more than 200,000 €.

The solution

In numerous companies, wastewater treatment by means of vacuum distillation has already been established as a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to disposal. The Umdasch company also decided very early on to treat its industrial wastewater efficiently and sustainably. A VACUDEST vacuum evaporator has been in operation since 2002 - at that time with a capacity of 400 m³/year. Given the expansion of powder coating in 2018, the company has invested into a new VACUDEST M 1.500 Clearcat - for 1,500 m³ per year.

The requirements for the manufacturer of the VACUDEST, the company H2O GmbH based in Steinen, Baden, were:

Increaseof the capacity from 400 m³ to 1,500 m³, location in the same space.
A rinse water quality enabling direct use as characterized by a conductance < 20 µS/cm.

H2O GmbH was able to meet both of these challenges. The confined space conditions were not a problem due to the space saving design and so the more powerful new VACUDEST M 1.500 CC was also able to take its place in the same location. (see figure 2).

A special criteria was the conductivity of the rinsing water. Often, due to certain physical effects, oils in particular cannot be completely separated with distillation and propagate into the distillate in traces. This effect can often lead to turbidity of the distillate. In this case, such a result would lead to additional costs for post-treatment on top of the running costs.

But not with the patented H2O Clearcat system. It guarantees the customer thehighest distillate quality without the use of the conventional post-treatment and consumables. This additional module for the VACUDEST vacuum distillation system allows the safe and efficient treatment of industrial wastewater containing oil and grease in a single process step. At Umdasch, the conductivity value was finally reduced to 3 µS/cm and the desired goal was more than met.

With this result, H2O GmbH was ultimately able to convice the decision makers at Umdasch The Store Makers GmbH, especially those in the technical area. The entire team is satisfied with the course of the project and the successful implementation with H2O: "With these excellent results in conductivity, the distillate can be reused 1:1 and does not have to be retreated again - that convinced us." Thanks to the recirculation, the company's production is now almost wastewater-free, as the treated water can be recirculated without any problems.

Figure 1: At its site in Leibnitz, south of Graz, Umdasch The Store Makers GmbH has already decided for the second VACUDEST vacuum distillation system. The reasons: Better rinse water quality, lower operating costs and higher reliability.

Machine reliability translates into process reliability

Another decisive factor in favor of their second VACUDEST system was the lower operating costs due to the low level of chemical cleaning required. Hardness formers in the water and other impurities can clog the heat exchanger bundles and lead to an increased energy consumption, the effectiveness of the system is reduced. In addition, maintenance and cleaning costs increase. The problem is also known from the own household - for example within a kettle.

With vacuum evaporators, however, the risk of deposits forming is many times higher. This is why H2O GmbH has developed the proven Activepowerclean technology. It uses small ceramic spheresfor continuous heat exchanger cleaning. The natural circulation of the process water in the heat exchanger circulates the ceramic balls and reduces the formation of deposits on the inner surface of the heat exchanger. Consequences of deposit formation, such as high operating costs for chemical and mechanical cleaning due to clogging of the tubes, are prevented. The motto here is: deposit prevention instead of deposit treatment! Being able to operate the machine at high concentration factors is also a key driver for its excellent economic rentability.

At the Leibnitz site, Umdasch has already opted for the second VACUDEST from H2O GmbH. In close cooperation between the two companies, the project was put into practice efficiently and a smooth commissioning was carried out in the production in Leibnitz.

The project was completed to the full satisfaction of all parties involved and thus the course is set for a further long-lasting and successful cooperation.

Figure 2: The VACUDEST M 1.500 Clearcat treats the wash water from surface treatment so well that the distillate can be reused in the process without further post-treatment.

Advantages through our solution

Sustainable

From 100 percent wastewater, 98 percent clean distillate is produced, which can be reused in your processes: You realise a wastewater-free production and thus make a valuable contribution to the protection of our environment.

Economical

Our high-quality systems require hardly any manpower, save operating resources, and reduce disposal costs enormously. Therefore, our systems often pay for themselves in less than 2 years. After that, you save up to 10 million euros in 10 years.

Space-saving

Where other processing methods require a lot of space, our VACUDEST technology impresses with efficiency in the smallest of spaces. This gives you more space in production for more important things.