The wash water used in casein manufacture, which contains diluted whey solids, had been irrigated on to the farms until 1993. The business decided to recover this material as stock food. The process uses high pressure pumps to force water through a tight molecular structure. Up to five times the original solids level can be concentrated. Economics Water from the reverse osmosis plant is used within the factory.
Milk products leave in a dry form.
The recovery of this water by evaporation and reverse osmosis allows water to be reused. The potential reuse of water derived from milk has been identified as 2,500 m3 per day. When further reverse osmosis processing capacity was installed on site, a large resource of clean water became available. A recovery system was installed with the goal of reusing up to 1000 m3 per day for cleaning. Currently the system is operating at between 550 and 750 m3 per day.