Legacy Wastewater Chemistry Is Holding Food & Beverage Back
Key Highlights
- Legacy wastewater programs can drive higher costs and unpredictable plant performance.
- New chemistry approaches are helping plants cut costs while improving stability and compliance.
- Read real-world case studies from some of the largest food & beverage producers in the US.
For most food and beverage producers, wastewater treatment isn’t just about staying in compliance. It’s a material cost center that affects water use, energy bills, staffing, downtime, and regulatory fines.
And yet, much of the industry still relies on legacy chemistry: generic coagulants and polyacrylamide (PAM) flocculants that remain largely unchanged since the 1970s. These products were designed for steady flows and predictable loads. Today’s plants operate under constant change: inputs shift daily, regulations tighten quarterly, and variability is the norm.
That mismatch leads to a series of cascading issues and costs:
- Excess chemistry spend & water use
- Increased OPEX in labor and equipment downtime
- Regulatory risks
- Increased sludge transportation cost & scope 3 emissions
Working with some of the largest F&B producers in North America, we’ve seen how legacy chemicals, inherited from old regimes, sap time and money from operations and hit the P&L several times over.
Our response to this is modern science. We’ve developed a molecular design platform that lets us build flocculants and coagulants from the particle up, tuning them to perform under real-world conditions, not just ideal ones.
I’ll explain the problems with PAM using examples from our work in the industry to show what better chemistry can look like for your bottom line.
The issue with legacy chemistry
Food & beverage wastewater is particularly challenging. Influent often has large variances in temperature, PH, and FOG (fats, oils, grease) content which require treatment chemistry to be adjusted.
PAM has long been the standby, but it comes with significant drawbacks because PAM is a non-selective polymer, ‘blind’ to what is in your water. It can’t distinguish which particles it needs to bind with, so it binds with everything. That often means operators must feed far more than the theoretical dose to keep KPIs on track.
Said another way, you effectively pay 100% of the cost for something that does ~20% of the job. As a result, you have to dose sometimes as much as 5x of it to (maybe?) hit your KPIs.
Performance, maintenance, and compliance costs
According to the EPA, 25% of F&B producers experienced some kind of wastewater compliance issue in the last three years, costing an average of $50M a year in penalties. Some facilities paid out as much as $30M.
Proper PAM dosing is a critical part of maintaining compliance, but this can be challenging, or even impossible when the influent changes drastically. Apply too little, and contaminants like solids, fats, and oils remain in the water, resulting in elevated Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)—the most common triggers for regulatory penalties.
On the other hand, overdosing to maintain compliance creates sticky flocs that clog belts, pipes, and pumps—increasing chemistry cost, maintenance cost, and downtime. Without a chemistry program that can handle your plant’s production swings; operators are stuck in a catch 22.
Excessive dosing and water use
Dosing all that PAM typically requires make-down, where crews mix dry flocculant with large amounts of water. Calibrating the mix is tricky because influent water changes throughout the day, forcing crews to babysit the rigs. And the water use is massive, reaching up to millions of gallons a day in larger facilities. All that water and all that time spent dosing stack up to significant annual costs.
Case Study: One of North America’s largest winemakers struggled with sharp swings in pectin, sugar, and TSS during grape harvest months. Their chemistry program could not meet KPIs, and the increased cost put pressure on profit margins.
We designed a new program to address the challenges of harvest season and simplify operations year-round. Switching to SCADA-integrated pumps improved dose stability as flow rates shifted, and CarboNet chemistry consistently held DAF effluent within KPIs during harvest.
These changes reduced the cost-to-treat 20-25% (an estimated $100,000 annual savings) and saved 4.9 million gallons of water saved annually while reduced labor requirements during peak season.
Sludge weight, transportation costs, and Scope 3 emissions
The ratio of water & solids in dewatered sludge is important. Dry sludge weighs less and occupies less volume, directly reducing transportation and disposal costs. However, if you are forced to dose heavy amounts of PAM to hit your TSS and BOD KPIs, you are very likely producing wet (heavy) sludge. Many global F&B brands are also under pressure to cut Scope 3 emissions across their supply chains. Sludge hauling represents a hidden hotspot for producers.
Case Study: A frozen food producer was looking for ways to reduce sludge hauling costs and associated emissions. The plant’s influent had high solids and large swings in temperature and pH.
Incumbent chemistry formed weak, inconsistent flocs that couldn’t be dewatered by the screw press, forcing disposal of wet, untreated sludge. Meanwhile, the client aimed to cut Scope 3 emissions and found sludge transport was a key contributor—making wastewater optimization a clear business case.
Switching to CarboNet chemistry reduced their sludge volume 75%, resulting in an $800,000 annual savings. Here’s an example of what that looks like in practice.
NanoNets provide an alternative to legacy chemistry
CarboNet’s NanoNet technology enables a new generation of flocculants and coagulants designed for the realities of F&B wastewater. By improving particle targeting and floc strength, NanoNets allow facilities to:
- Use less PAM while maintaining KPIs
- Reduce make-down water consumption and operator burden
- Improve dewatering efficiency to cut hauling costs
- Lower Scope 3 emissions linked to sludge transport
Every plant has unique influent challenges. That’s why CarboNet works with producers on on-site testing and trials, delivering real-world data before scale-up. We manufacture and distribute all our products, so you get performance, price, and support with no compromises.
About the Author
Amielle Lake is cofounder and CCO at CarboNet, an advanced materials company focused on wastewater treatment chemistry. She works with large F&B producers to reduce polymer use, operating costs, and emissions.