HUTIRA – VISION, s.r.o., helps winemakers. Explores the possibilities of treating and recycling wastewater from vineyards

The company HUTIRA – VISION, s.r.o., has been awarded an innovation voucher for basic research and development in the field of wastewater treatment and recycling from wineries. The aim of the project, in which it is working together with the Institute of Process Engineering at the University of Technology, is to design a technology that will reduce the cost of processing wastewater from wineries.

There are 17,000 hectares of vineyards in the South Moravian Region, managed by a total of 16,000 growers. However, wineries produce large volumes of wastewater, which often cannot be discharged into the sewerage system and therefore not into the wastewater treatment plant due to the level of pollution.

This should be changed by the joint project of HUTIRA – VISION, s.r.o. with the Institute of Process Engineering of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Technology, which is co-financed by the European Union. Our experts, alongside scientists, will assess the possibilities of wastewater treatment from winery operations and develop a technology proposal that would eliminate the shortcomings of standard solutions and at the same time achieve the required wastewater treatment.

“We have verified through experimentation that our technology enables the treatment of winery wastewater to meet the conditions for discharge to a wastewater treatment plant. In particular, we monitored the chemical oxygen demand (COD) parameter. Thanks to our technology, its value can be reduced by more than 95%, thus achieving the requirements of wastewater treatment plants,” says Petr Hajný, director of HUTIRA – VISION, s.r.o.

Based on these results, we are continuing our research and development, which has already moved into real operation, where we are testing the behavior of the technology on a semi-operational unit and trying to achieve the best possible results. The new technology will help winegrowers reduce the cost of wastewater treatment. Their current disposal is very costly. “In addition, we try to reduce the investment costs for winemakers as much as possible for the acquisition and operation of the technology, but also for the necessary built-up area,” adds Hajný.