Your effluent treatment plant: 5 ways to get it on track in 2023
Effluent treatment might not be the first thing you think of as you look ahead to 2023 but having a plant that is working to its optimum is key to ensuring discharge consent compliance and reducing your environmental impact.
As a new year is the perfect opportunity to look at things with a fresh perspective, here are 5 ways you can optimise your effluent treatment system:
1. Assess your current effluent treatment plant
Before making any changes, it is worth assessing where you are now. How has your effluent treatment plant been performing? Have you been meeting your discharge conditions? Are your operational costs a concern?
By conducting an operational review of your effluent treatment systems and processes, you will get an idea of what work needs to be done.
It could be that your plant is working to its best and therefore you can simply respond to any issues should they arise.
Alternatively, you could identify many areas for improvement, in which case you can either rely on in-house expertise, or work with effluent treatment specialists (more on these later).
2. Make efficiency your goal
Whilst it may seem a no-brainer, it is still worth remembering that ensuring your effluent treatment plant is running efficiently will not only reduce your waste but reduce your operational costs too.
Such efficiency will depend largely on having the correct treatment systems in place for the type of effluent produced by your business. This can be established by the following:
Chemical trials:
Effluent treatment experts like Aqua Advice can carry out free laboratory trials to ascertain the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of your wastewater, including chemical composition and pH rating.
By establishing these characteristics, the correct effluent treatment processes can be identified.
Mogden formula assessment:
This is the industry-standard formula used to establish the volume of solids suspended in effluent, which is then used to calculate the amount a business will be charged for its trade effluent.
By using this assessment as a guide, you can clean up your effluent or reduce the amount you produce, resulting in lower trade effluent charges.
3. Upgrade or replace your effluent treatment plant when necessary
After identifying areas where efficiency could be improved, it may be the case that you need to replace key parts and processes within your treatment plant.
Innovative techniques for chemical treatment are constantly being developed by companies like Aqua Advice, so upgrades of this sort could be just what you need.
Alternatively, your treatment plant may no longer be fit for purpose. Whether it is overloaded or simply too old, a brand new treatment plant will need to be installed.
Experts like Aqua Advice can advise whether a bespoke or turnkey solution will best suit the specific needs your business.
4. Look to the future
Like all industries, effluent treatment is constantly developing so it is well worth keeping an eye on changing technologies to ensure you have the most efficient and effective treatment systems in place.
In a recent interview, Andy Dargue, the founder of Aqua Advice, predicted that treatment plants would increasingly focus on instrumentation, monitoring and automation.
Lots of sites, for example, are looking at how they can log and access data remotely. Whether this is something that your business would benefit from – and its implications – is certainly worth considering as you begin 2023.
5. Call in the effluent treatment experts
All New Year’s resolutions are made with the best intentions, but life has a habit of getting in the way!
If you find you don’t have the time or resources to implement the above, then working with specialists like Aqua Advice is an efficient and cost-effective way of managing your treatment plant.
With over 30 years in the business, Aqua Advice have the skills, knowledge and experience to ensure the systems you have in place are working to their optimum.
Make 2023 the year your effluent treatment plant exceeds your expectations: get in touch with Aqua Advice today.