Washing IBC totes uses a lot of water. A full wash cycle — cold flood, detergent stage, one or more hot rinses — can take on the order of a hundred gallons or more of potable water per tote, and all of it leaves as effluent loaded with residue, detergent, and BOD. For a reconditioner processing hundreds of totes a week, water and sewer charges become a major operating cost. That’s why many wash operations recover and reuse part of their water. Here’s how those systems generally work, and what to ask a supplier about their wash process.
The first cut: catch the rinse
Most of the water in a wash cycle goes to the final rinses, and that water comes off relatively clean. The obvious first step is to catch the final rinse and use it as the next tote’s first flood. A typical setup is a catch tank with an inline pH meter and a turbidity probe: rinse water that meets the setpoints diverts to the tank, and out-of-spec water continues to drain.
Because the first flood only needs to loosen residue, reusing final-rinse water there doesn’t compromise wash quality, and it can cut fresh water use substantially.
The second cut: filter and reuse the wash water
The detergent (usually caustic) wash water carries most of the bottle residue. Filtering and reusing it, rather than mixing fresh solution every cycle, reduces fresh water use further and cuts chemical consumption. Common components are bag filters in series (a coarse primary and a finer secondary), a heater to hold temperature between cycles, and a dosing pump controlled by a pH or conductivity meter to keep the caustic concentration in range.
The constraint: food-grade quality
Recycled wash water is generally fine for industrial-grade totes (Grade B and Grade C), but careful operations keep food-grade (Grade A) washes on fresh potable water. If you’re buying food-grade totes, ask the supplier whether their food-grade rinses use fresh water only.
Effluent side
Reuse reduces both discharge volume and the BOD load leaving the site, which matters because municipal sewer districts may impose pretreatment requirements and surcharges on high-strength industrial discharge. In Northeast Ohio, that’s a conversation with your local sewer district before you build anything.
What tends not to work
Polishing recycled water with reverse osmosis so it can feed food-grade washes sounds appealing, but wash water fouls membranes quickly and replacement costs can wipe out the savings. Most operations accept that food-grade washes use fresh water.
Sizing lesson
Undersized catch tanks are a common mistake. Suspended solids need enough residence time to settle; a larger tank upstream can reduce or even eliminate the need for fine filtration on lower-grade work.
Questions on this one? Use the quote form to request a quote, and we can put you in touch with partner suppliers in Northeast Ohio.