MCERTS accredited instrumentation eases pressure for monitoring water for effluent discharge under increasingly stringent legislation

ABB’s AWT420 Transmitter, 100GP and 500 Pro pH sensors recently joined the ABB WaterMaster electromagnetic flowmeter and AST430 TSS sensor by attaining MCERTS accreditation.

Stricter legislation in the UK and beyond has brought the quality of discharged effluent under the spotlight and added emphasis to effective management and control of wastewater.

Continuous Water Analysis (CWA) systems offer the best method to meet these tougher demands as they provide precise, up to the minute data on process conditions. The UK’s Environmental Permitting Regulations or EPR, states that  all industrial companies discharging 50m3 or more effluent every day to a watercourse or the sea must self-monitor their effluent flows. In the final discharge from a water utility’s treatment plant or industrial site, among the main parameters to monitor or control are ammonia, temperature, phosphate, pH, flow and turbidity/suspended solids.

In 1984, the Air Framework Directive (AFD) introduced BATNEEC (best available techniques not entailing excessive costs) for mitigating air emissions from major industrial polluters. This was followed, twelve years later by the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive; this extended BAT (best available techniques) to include the control of emissions to water and land, as well as air. BAT is not just about investing in the latest cutting-edge technology, it is about discovering the most effective way of lowering emissions in practice, through well engineered innovative equipment, novel processes, improved procedures or good engineering practices. 

The MCERTS scheme was introduced in 1998, it was implemented to create a unified standard for measuring and reporting environmental data from industrial and utilities sites. Operators are obliged to use MCERT accredited instrumentation rather than competing products based on the same technology. However, if an alternative technique can outperform MCERTS approved instruments for a specific application, organisations have the option to prove to the satisfaction of a qualified MCERTS inspector that they are using BAT.