PCL built this wastewater pretreatment plant to accommodate the large amount of effluent that the new Molson Coors brewery in Chilliwack, British Columbia, will produce.

“The brewery wastewater that comes from the Molson Coors plant is a high-strength wastewater, which means there’s a large amount of organic matter in the water content,” says PCL project manager Anthony Slivinski. “That results i​n the water needing pretreatment before it goes to the main facility.”

The Chilliwack Wastewater Pretreatment facility processes 19,000 gallons of water per hour, which the brewery requires to pr​oduce more than 211,000 cans of beer in the same amount of time.

The brewery sends the effluent on a four-kilometer journey through underground piping before the treatment process begins. The effluent is then analyzed and pretreated and sent to the digester, where a sludge bed of microorganisms will eat any solids suspended in the wastewater.

This process results in the formation of bio-gas, which is collected and intended to power the Calorix i​n the future, the main water heater for the facility. The Calorix is the first installation of its kind in Canada.

“Use of bio-gas reduces reliance on fossil fuels, so it’s a sustainable process that will bring future benefit,” says Slivinski. “And sludge used i​n the digestor can be removed to fertilize farmland.”

Water infrastructure built by PCL, such as treatment plants and reclamation facilities, makes available more than 20 billion gallons of treated water per day to communities and local businesses across North America.