Reducing Effluent Discharge and Associated Costs
Award-winning ice cream manufacturer Mauds has been in business since 1979. An environmentally aware company, it has converted its state-of-the-art factory in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, to LED lighting indoors and outdoors and cut its plastic use by 80%.
Next on its environmental awareness plan was limiting Mauds’ impact on the water cycle. The company asked to provide guidance on improving the quality of its trade effluent, which is created during washing procedures in the ice cream production area. When milk and cream residue was rinsed from storage tanks, this was treated using a regular grease trap filter before being discharged into NI Water’s sewer network.
With Mauds having grown substantially since its factory was built in 2000, the grease trap filter was no longer controlling fats, oils and greases (FOG) effectively. While grease traps remove surface oil from wastewater, many fats were emulsified by detergents used in Mauds’ cleaning processes and its grease trap system was ineffective at removing emulsified FOG from the effluent.
As a result, Mauds was struggling to achieve NI Water’s discharge consent limit of 100mg/L for FOG.