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ETP consultancy

ETP consultancy and effluent treatment troubleshooting

An effluent treatment plant is designed against an effluent that was described on paper. Production changes, the effluent changes with it, and the plant is asked to do a job it was never sized for. We establish what is actually arriving, what the plant can actually do, and where the gap between them is.

The engagement, on one sheet
Investigate
the plant you have, as it runs
5 areas
an investigation looks at
Diagnosis
kept separate from what to do about it
Quoted
before any further work starts

Who arrives here

You are probably here because

If none of these is your situation, it is still worth a conversation: this list is not exhaustive.

  • The outlet fails the consent parameter, sometimes or always
  • The plant holds at low production and fails when the line runs full
  • Chemical or power cost per cubic metre keeps climbing
  • A pollution control board notice has arrived and nobody can explain the cause
  • A vendor has quoted a new plant and nobody has established that the old one is the problem

What an investigation looks at.

Lines of enquiry, not conclusions. Which of them matters for your plant is what the investigation establishes.

Line of enquiry01

The effluent itself

  • Actual flow and load against the design basis, measured rather than assumed
  • Stream-by-stream characterisation where several processes discharge to one drain
  • Batch and shock discharges, and whether segregation would remove the problem entirely
  • Inhibitory or toxic constituents reaching a biological stage

Line of enquiry02

Primary and physico-chemical treatment

  • Screening, equalisation volume and whether equalisation is actually equalising
  • Coagulant and flocculant selection, dose, dosing point, mixing energy and pH window
  • Jar test behaviour against plant behaviour, which frequently disagree
  • Oil and grease removal, DAF performance and skimming

Line of enquiry03

Biological treatment

  • MLSS, F/M ratio, sludge age and whether the process is being run to any of them
  • Dissolved oxygen profiled through the tank rather than read at one probe
  • Settleability, SVI, filamentous structure and return sludge rate
  • Nutrient balance where the effluent is carbon-rich and nutrient-deficient

Line of enquiry04

Separation and tertiary stages

  • Clarifier surface loading, weir condition, sludge blanket depth and short-circuiting
  • Filtration media condition, backwash adequacy and channelling
  • Adsorption or oxidation stages, where present, and whether they are exhausted

Line of enquiry05

Operation and evidence

  • What the operators actually do, as opposed to what the manual says
  • Where samples are drawn, how they are preserved, and whether the failure is a treatment failure or a sampling artefact
  • Logs, laboratory records and instrument calibration
What an engagement produces, level by level

Problems this usually arrives with.

Talk to an Expert

Bring us the symptom. We will find the cause.

Describe what the plant is doing, in your own words. You do not need to know the cause first.

Talk to an Expert

A specialist calls you and tells you the right next step and its cost.

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