Wastewater sources vary according to the type of milk and dairy production facilities and the final product to be obtained. The facilities that can be given examples of wastewater resources; milk collection centers, milk bottling facilities, cheese, butter, cream, milk powder, yogurt factories. Wastewater from these sources is separated from the process and originating from production. Wastewater generated outside of the process is the blowdown water used in steam power plants and cooling systems and it constitutes approximately 60% of the wastewater. Properties of wastewater originating from production may vary according to production technology. This group consists of wastewater from washing the containers and equipment in milk delivery, storage, pasteurization, washing the tanks producing yogurt and ayran, and general cleaning.
Dairy establishments are defined as a group of important industrial wastewater resources. For the dairy industry; color, suspended solids (SS), biological oxygen demand (BOD5), nitrogen content, phosphorus content, chemical oxygen demand (COD), chloride, temperature, and pH are considered to be the most important pollutant parameters. Milk factory wastewaters contain a small amount of SS.
However, the amount of SS increases due to the amount of oil suspended in cheese factory wastewater. The dairy industry has a high BOD value, as they contain high amounts of organic matter. In various studies, biological oxygen need in whey has been determined between 110 000- 350 000 mg/L.
Various chemical treatment and aerobic, anoxic, and anaerobic biological treatment methods such as sequential batch reactor, membrane bioreactor, fluidized-bed bioreactor can be applied to treat wastewater originating from the dairy industry.
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