Tanzania: Tanzania Breweries to use sea water in beer production

The Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL) will build a desalination plant in Dar es Salaam in April, next year, to use sea water to produce beer, BBC Monitoring Africa reported April 2.

TBL corporate affairs director, Mr Phocus Laswai, revealed the plan in Dar es Salaam yesterday, saying the desalination plant will increase TBL's freshwater stock. He was explaining his firm's activities to the Parliamentary Community Development Committee at the company premises. Mr Laswai said that the project would cost about 11bn shillings.

It was now technically and economically feasible to produce volumes of water of suitable purity, through the desalination of sea water, he told the MPs.

According to Mr Laswai, large-scale sea water desalination processes are applied in some Gulf states where there is freshwater shortage. For small-scale freshwater production, basin-type solar stills are viable options.

Mr Laswai said that such stills are designed to meet families' needs, or the needs of small villages scattered, for instance, in the southern part of Iran.

"Heat transfer equations governing the operation of basin-type solar stills may produce three to six litres of freshwater per square metre per day, with an estimated average production rate of 1.5 cubic metres per square metre per year (m3/m2/y)," Mr Laswai added. The produced salt can be marketed, explained the TBL director.

He said the project would address freshwater uncertainties and the chronic scarcity of tap water supplied by the Dar es Salaam Water and Sewerage Corporation (Dawasco).

"We want to draw water from the sea due to water shortage and unpredictable future of well-water, as it might reach a time where stored water will not be sustainable," he stated.

TBL consumes an estimated 4,000 cubic metres a day, but it hardly receives half of its requirements from Dawasco. The company gets 1,500 cubic metres of water from wells and another 900 cubic metres supplied by Dawasco.

Meanwhile, the National Environmental Management Council (NEMC) has said that desalination is a common technology that is applied in areas facing water shortage, and TBL was free to apply the technology in so long as it does not harm environment.

"The technology is highly applied worldwide, and the salt separated from the water is normally managed well, to make sure that it does not affect the environment", said Mr Bonaventure Baya, the acting director of NEMC.

He described that if the remained blackish water and salt were improperly disposed of would have adverse impacts to environment, such as drying up streams and killing some living organisms.

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