J. Int. Environmental Application & Science, Vol. 2 (1&2): 1-4 (2007) 1 Utilization of whey for waste minimization of white cheese industry: a case study Mustafa Şamil ARGUN a , Adem ELGÜN b , M. Emin ARGUN c , Mustafa KARATAŞ c a Izi Süt Company, Konya, TURKEY b Department of Food Engineering, Agriculture Faculty, Selcuk University, 42031 Konya, TURKEY c Department of Environmental Engineering, Engineering & Architecture Faculty, Selcuk University, 42031 Konya, TURKEY Accepted 17 April, 2007 Abstract: Cheese industry wastes have a major impact on the ecology because of high organic content. Thus, waste minimization is an important concept in the application of the waste management in the white cheese industry. In this article, a case study on the waste minimization of a white cheese industry by reuse of whey has been investigated. Our results indicated that high strength organic content of whey reduced from 64,300 mg L -1 to zero by reusing whey to produce whey powder. Keywords: Whey; minimization; white cheese; waste water; reuse. Introduction Whey is a by-product of the dairy industry in which the principal components are lactose, proteins and mineral salts (Vasala et al., 2005). Approximately 47% of the 115 million tons of whey produced world-wide every year are disposed of in the environment (Leite et al., 2000; Zhou and Kosaric, 1993; Siso, 1996). This represents a significant loss of resources and causes serious pollution problems since whey is a high strength organic pollutant with high BOD 5 (Biological Oxygen Demand) and COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand), with values of 40,000– 60,000 mg/l and 50,000–80,000 mg/l, respectively (Ben-Hassan and Ghaly, 1994; Fournier et al., 1993). More than 90% of whey BOD 5 is due to lactose (Kisaalita et al., 1990). Treatment methods of white cheese industry waste water have been studied intensively during last decade years. Problems of the pollutants removal from waste water were increased with fast industrialization. These waste waters are produced large volumes and must be absolutely treated before discharge. Due to the high organic content of whey, regular treatment processes such as the activated sludge process are completely inappropriate (Gavala et al., 1999). However some treatment process such as anaerobic membrane process (Saddoud et al., 2007), reverse osmosis (Re et al., 1998), electrodialysis and ion exchange (Greiter et al., 2002) can be used. On the other hand, waste minimization seems to be more reasonable because of other processes have high operating cost and the difficulty of treatment of by-products. Waste minimization in general can be classified into two categories: recycling/recovery and source reduction. Generally, source reduction takes priority before the other and is the most economic tool for waste minimization. Reducing the amount of process water will be effective in reducing the quantity of total wastes (Argun et al., 2006; Lo and Tsao, 1997). The recovery processes includes reuse of whey by passing whey through evaporation processes. The recovered whey powder can be used again with the relevant industry (Elgun, 1981). Our goal in the present study was to demonstrate reuse of whey could have acceptable reduction efficiency for removing COD, BOD 5 and TSS (Total Suspended Solids) and could thus offer an effective and economical alternative to more expensive treatments.