Waste Treatment in the Liquor Distilling
Industry
A. J. SMITH, Project Engineer
National Distillers and Chemical Corporation
Cincinnati, Ohio
There is perhaps, a confusion in the minds of the public in general, and even
the scientific community as to the various businesses that are lumped together under
the title of the "Alcoholic Beverage Industry".
The following report is related to the manufacture of distilled alcoholic
beverages, processed from grain, including whiskey, gin, vodka and cordials.
The problems of waste treatment in the manufacture of beer, wine, and brandy
are completely different in nature and solution, and no part of this report applies to
these alcoholic beverages.
The liquor distilling industry presents a history of both a common and a
relatively unusual set of problems in the area of liquid-solid waste treatment.
In any industry a proper question is—"What is waste?" The answer to this
question is more frequently one of psychological conditioning than one of
economics.
An industry may be set up to produce a specific product, and both tradition or
economics may require that a specific raw material, or materials be used. If all the
raw material purchased does not become product, the residue may become a
secondary product. The fact that the secondary product has a lower profit margin
and does not produce an equivalent level of profit as the base product, has not in the
past necessarily ruled it out of production. On the other hand, if it were a polluting
type of waste it did not, in the past, necessarily mean it would be recovered at the
lower profit margin. It might, within the past 30 years, be simply dumped into the
closest river, lake, etc.
Today industry may find that this secondary product will not only be
produced at a low profit, but some will produce it at a loss, in order to prevent it
becoming a pollution problem. This is the basic condition of the liquor industry.
By Federal law, all products manufactured in the United States called whiskey
or grain neutral spirits must be made from grain.
Spirits, commonly called "grain neutral spirits" is simply ethyl alcohol, and is
used to make gin, cordials, vodka, and is mixed with straight whiskey to make
blended whiskey.
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