Are you paying too much because of inefficient wastewater treatment?
For industrial and manufacturing businesses, regular charges for wastewater disposal can often be a significant entry on the balance sheet.
It is the duty of all businesses to remain in compliance by ensuring the contaminants in wastewater discharged to municipal treatment facilities or a watercourse are within their consent. Failure to do so results in a dreaded red letter warning and potential fines.
As a result, it is so important for businesses to keep within their permitted limits – but many industrial business leaders do not realise that going beyond compliance to actively reduce the contaminants in discharged wastewater can help them make significant savings by reducing their disposal bills.
Understanding how these charges are calculated, using a method known as the Mogden Formula, is the first step towards making those efficiencies.
What is the Mogden Formula?
The Mogden Formula is a complex mathematical method used by UK water companies to calculate the trade effluent charges a business will incur when it discharges industrial effluent to a foul sewer.
Its name comes from the Mogden Water Works in Isleworth, London, which was the first to use a number of variables to calculate fees using a method that has since become an industry standard.
Factors such as contamination levels, types of contaminants and the strength of the effluent are taken into account to calculate the cost per cubic metre of treating the wastewater a business produces.
While the formula itself is complicated, its impact is easy to understand: the more contaminated the effluent, the higher the charges.
The good news is that if you can remove or reduce the amount of contamination within the effluent before it leaves your site, the charges imposed on you will decrease.
To a surprisingly large extent, this makes wastewater disposal a controllable cost. However, many industrial businesses miss opportunities to reduce Mogden charges because their water treatment systems do the bare minimum to meet consent, they may be poorly configured, or the site may have simply evolved over time making their treatment plant no longer up to the task.
What factors can drive up wastewater charges?
Mogden charges vary between industries not just because of discharge volumes, but also because of the type of contaminants present.
For example, dairy businesses typically face high charges because their effluent contains elevated levels of fats, oils and grease (FOG). Other industries may produce effluent with high acidity or alkalinity, or with a high chemical oxygen demand (COD) due to organic pollutants that are difficult to break down and potentially hazardous to aquatic life.
How can water treatment solutions help industrial businesses cut costs?
Every business is unique, which is why a site visit from a water treatment specialist is essential to identify where changes can be made to reduce costs.
Specialists can uncover missed opportunities, recommend process improvements, and help strike the most cost-effective balance between equipment investment and Mogden charge savings.
In some cases, the solution can be as simple as installing a balance tank to even out flow and load, allowing downstream treatment processes to operate more efficiently.
More advanced treatment methods may include:
- Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF), which uses very small air bubbles to separate FOG and solids from water so they can be skimmed off and removed.
- Lamella settlement tanks, which use a series of sloping plates to encourage contaminants to settle, allowing sludge to be collected at the base.
- MBBR (Moving Bed Biofilm Reactors), which use aeration systems and plastic carrier media to promote biological treatment by encouraging waste to form clumps that separate from the water.
Chemical dosing and/or the introduction of bacteria for biological treatment can further optimise equipment performance by improving the removal of dissolved and solid organic matter, resulting in higher-quality effluent.
How do modular solutions provide the answer?
Each stage of industrial wastewater treatment comes with a cost, but also a potential saving in Mogden charges. The key to success is identifying the “sweet spot” where treatment costs and charge reductions are optimally balanced.
Once this balance is understood, specialists can design the most effective solution. Modular treatment units make this possible through their flexibility and scalability. Built off-site to meet specific business requirements, they are delivered as fully packaged, plug-and-play systems.
These systems can scale in line with demand, helping businesses maintain cost-efficient wastewater treatment, particularly where production varies seasonally. In some cases, large organisations have
achieved savings of hundreds of thousands of pounds per year in Mogden charges, allowing treatment equipment to pay for itself in a relatively short timeframe.
Improved predictability of wastewater disposal charges also supports better budgeting and long-term planning.
Find out more about saving on Mogden charges with Siltbuster
Siltbuster is the UK market leader in environmental solutions for responsive water and wastewater treatment. Our agile, modular approach uses packaged plants with proven technologies applied in innovative ways, tailoring each solution to individual environmental, sector and site demands.
Siltbuster specialises in industrial sectors including food and beverage production, manufacturing and processing.
To find out more about how you could reduce your Mogden charges, contact our specialists.