The Catalan company has become a true reference thanks to its innovative and efficient systems for keeping fruit and vegetable washing water clean without wasting a single drop. Ilerdagua has spent years specialising in waste water treatment and has an extensive track record in installing machinery in Sub-Saharan Africa, experience that has helped them start up an innovative system to reduce water waste in fruit washing. José Antonio, General Manager of Ilerdagua, explains the system in detail to Fruit Today.
In what way do Ilerdagua’s washing systems stand out compared to others?
The first thing that must be understood is that fruit washing water has a much higher organic matter content than other waters due to its continuous input of organic matter to the emptying ponds and keeping it clean is completely impossible. Since our first pilot plant we have improved and adapted the flows, the type of fruit or each client’s requirements. Currently, our filtering systems keep the water in the ponds at cleanliness levels that are almost, almost drinkable.
By eliminating all the organic matter from the ponds, we also eliminate most of the chemical products attached to this content, decreasing the risk of cross-contamination. Furthermore, with clean water, the amount of product used to guarantee its disinfection is reduced.
And how is this possible?
We base our work on nepholometric turbidity units (NTU), which is the parameter that measures the turbidity of a fluid. In order for the water to be suitable for drinking, this figure must be less than 5 NTU. With our systems, the water in the washing pond is continuously at less than 20 NTU and our aim is for it to always be at 5 NTU when it leaves the filter.
Tell me about Ilerdagua’s 0 dumping system.
Any filtering system has losses of between 3 and 10% every hour owing to the purges that it carries out to expel the organic matter and other waste that it retains when cleaning; if you are treating 20 m3, this is a minimum of 600 litres per hour. We have created a system that recovers 100% of the water that the filter expels. Using a solid separation system, the organic matter is separated into sacks and 100% of the water returns to the circuit. The only water lost by the system is the water carried on the fruit: this is impossible to reuse. The filtering operates continuously, without having to be stopped at any time.
How does Ilerdagua stand out as a water treatment company outside the fruit and vegetable sector?
Ilerdagua is an exclusively water treatment engineering company. Our strong point is the fact that we can set up smaller installations in a shorter time period: in 2 or 3 months followed by continuous monitoring of the installation.
