On World Water Day, PepsiCo's Global Research & Development team confirmed successful results of a ground-breaking approach for condensing and purifying the steam evaporated from its fryers to recover over 50% of the water used in potato chip manufacturing lines.
PepsiCo had fully adopted this technique at its foods manufacturing plant in Kolkata, India, where the proof-of-concept showed the approach could save 60 million liters of water annually.
Given the success of the project, over the next seven years, the technology is expected to be adopted at nearly 30 potato chip manufacturing plants in high-water-risk areas globally
The energy recovered from the condensation can also be used for other manufacturing purposes, such as cooling part of the plant or converting it to electricity, reducing the plant’s energy needs.
The deployment of this integrated, scalable and cost-efficient technology today marks significant progress towards PepsiCo’s goal to become ‘Net Water Positive ‘by 2030.
Rinkesh Satija, Sr. Director, Supply Chain, PepsiCo India said, “Driven by winning with pep+ philosophy, we have committed ourselves to being a sustainable company and we want to be at the forefront of that journey. Over the years, we have been continuously exploring new technologies to reduce water use and to identify opportunities to use recycled water instead of freshwater.”
“The positive results of the innovative water treatment system technology marks a significant achievement for us to take sustainability mainstream as it will further accelerate the process of achieving the long-term goal of improving water security in the region.”
During the potato chip manufacturing process, potatoes are washed, peeled, sliced and sent to the fryer. About 80% of water inherent to the potatoes during this process is released as steam through the stack of the fryer.
The ground-breaking water treatment technology not only captures and condenses the steam but is also utilised to remove fats, oils and grease. The residual water generated through this process can be further used for other potato chip processing operations.
