Umang Yagnik
Senior Channel Growth Manager, ZwitterCo
Umang is Senior Channel Growth Manager at ZwitterCo, bringing ZwitterCo’s unique technology through channel partners across a variety of segments. He has 15 years of experience in the water industry within product management, marketing, business development, and technical sales. He has a degree in chemical engineering and earned an executive diploma in Marketing Management. He spent 7 years with Hydranautics, starting in India. Then in Canada he worked as both the Global Product Marketing Manager (Ultrafiltration) and Regional Account Executive for the company. Umang then joined Mann & Hummel Water & Fluid Solutions in 2019 as the Global Product Manager for UF. In 2021, he joined the North American expansion of NX Filtration as the Commercial Manager. He led the expansion and helped achieve commercial success in the form of multiple orders and paid pilots while establishing a strong pipeline for the following years.
Zwitterionic Membrane Process Enables High-strength Dairy Wastewater Reuse
As wastewater regulations become stricter and corporations implement sustainability initiatives, dairy processors are searching for solutions to achieve their environmental goals and reduce wastewater costs. High-strength dairy wastewater discharge often results in expensive municipal surcharges due to elevated concentrations of fats, oils, greases, and organic material. Traditional wastewater management options such as dissolved air flotation systems (DAFs) and hauling each present their own limitations and do not produce clean water for onsite reuse. The development of zwitterionic superfiltration (SF) membranes that are immune to irreversible organic fouling is creating new opportunities in dairy wastewater reuse by providing superior protection to downstream reverse osmosis (RO) systems. This presentation reviews a dairy processor case study of a novel, on-site SF-RO wastewater treatment process. The SF-RO process was selected over other alternatives due to its smaller footprint and high quality effluent. This work provides insight to the SF-RO technology operational characteristics, with particular focus on how the SF membrane improves downstream RO operations. As a result of implementing this solution, this facility has significantly reduced its hauling costs. This SF-RO process can be used throughout the dairy industry to enable compliance with discharge permits while reducing wastewater costs and enabling water reuse.