Consent Compliance

Consent Compliance Application

The criteria used to decide on the correct instrument for meeting consent requirements include reliability, ease of use, accuracy as well as cost:

Automatic Samplers & Flow measurement

  • Low cost samplers for regulatory requirements
  • Robust refrigerated samplers that can be installed outside without a costly housing
  • Link to flow meters for flow proportional sampling
  • Simple to operate and maintain

Process Analyzers

  • Choose the parameter / analysis that is needed large sample flows reduces sampling errors
  • In-situ measurement little or no requirement for chemicals

Typical Applications
Managing Consent Compliance In factories there are often a number of drains, sometimes well documented and tracked. The drains can run to a sewer and go through a waste water treatment plant, or flow into a natural water (river, lake or the sea). There will usually be a consent for discharge of waste water.

Typically this will include the maximum volume to be discharged, and it may also include a measure of the characteristics of the waste water such as pH, Solids, COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) or BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand) . COD and BOD are measures of the amount of treatment that the waste water would need in a waste water treatment works, or how much damage the water would cause rivers and lakes by using up the oxygen in the water.

It can be the case that just one part of the factory is the source of waste water which risks breaching the consent. It may also be the case that a cleaning routine will cause consents to be broken. Identifying the source of these issues can make it very easy to reduce the risk of breaching consents, and protect the environment. If there is loss of product - for example a tank is flushed out before it has been emptied as intended - then there is a double hit and a double saving to be made. The product has cost money to make, and is also costing money to throw away.

Often relatively simple and low cost house keeping and bunding arrangements can be put in place to make significant improvements in the performance and costs of the site. Having portable devices to check what is happening at various points around the site enables the source of problems to be identified. Using meters for solids; pH; and organic load allows these to be used at various points, and perhaps left in place for a few days to track what happens. Another route is to use an automatic sampler and gather samples which can be analysed later for key parameters.

Gathering this information can shed a great deal of light on what is causing problems, and what is not causing any problems. Where problems are found relatively simple and low cost house keeping and bunding arrangements can often make significant improvements in the performance and costs of the site.

Many of our customers have done this exercise, and worked back through the drains; checking the waste water just before different junction points to locate the source of pollution. This means that one or two samplers or monitors can then be permanently placed at key points to manage the performance of the plant, and the environmental/commercial risk of pollution and fines.