Delivering Substantial Savings on Effluent Costs
Chemical Costs
Monthly Breakdowns
Water Tecnik has been invaluable in their technical advice and engineering support. Avondale has been able to reliably and consistently reduce treated effluent contaminate levels, which is translating to real cost savings over the year.
Avondale Foods Ltd
Addressing Escalating Effluent Charges
A leading manufacturer and supplier of salads, soups and sauces, Avondale Foods has always taken its effluent quality seriously. It installed a water treatment system at its state-of-the-art production site in Craigavon in 2005. In recent times, Avondale’s management team became conscious that as production on site had increased, so too had effluent volumes and contamination levels.
Although the effluent being discharged to sewer was compliant with discharge consent limits, the quality was not as high as it had once been and this was increasing effluent discharge costs for the business. Higher contamination levels had resulted in higher charges being imposed by NI Water through its Mogden formula trade effluent billing calculations.
We were tasked with bringing those increased costs under control and improving the quality and consistency of Avondale’s effluent discharge.
Modern Technology for Increased Efficiency
We identified several areas in which we could implement changes and improvements to the water treatment plant to help Avondale achieve its goals of lower costs and better effluent quality.
Most significantly, we replaced the existing DAF white water system with our innovative micro-bubble generator white water system, which optimises the air-to-solids ratio within the DAF system.
Our testing indicated that the current flow balancing was inadequate and having a negative effect on chemical dosing control in the dissolved air floatation (DAF) system, causing inconsistent chemical treatments. In addition to upgrading and recalibrating the balance tank level controls, we replaced older polymer makeup and chemical dosing systems with reliable, modern technology that offers greater consistency of dosing.
We carried out chemical jar tests and wastewater lab analysis to evaluate various chemical treatments and were able to implement a change to a more cost-effective chemical for Avondale’s requirements.
We also increased the size of the final effluent transfer pumps in order to eliminate high level control issues, as well as improving overall performance by adding new pipe manifolds, completing pump refurbishments and undertaking several other general maintenance tasks.
Higher Effluent Quality and Greater Consistency
The improvements to the quality and consistency of Avondale Foods’ water treatment system has resulted in a 57% drop in cost per m3 to discharge effluent. Effluent discharge is of a much higher quality and is consistently below discharge consent limits.
The new technology we installed and maintenance work we carried out have improved plant reliability tremendously. Parts of the system that previously became blocked at least once a week are no longer suffering blockages. This has dramatically reduced the amount of time and money Avondale spends on repairs.
Our new chemical dosing system has reduced Avondale’s spending on chemicals by 49%, while also dramatically improving plant performance. We have entered a full maintenance and chemical supply agreement with Avondale, so they can continue to enjoy substantial savings over a long period of time.
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