Reducing Effluent Costs For Europe’s Biggest Truck Wash   You are here: Home » News Detail

Aquacell S320H at Lymm

Aquamatic Ltd, a leading UK manufacturer of automatic Wastewater Samplers, has supplied an outdoor Aquacell S320H Wastewater Sampler along with a self-emptying Sample Collection System to Lymm Truckwash in Cheshire. The Aquamatic system helps Lymm Truckwash avoid excessive effluent charges by automatically collecting regular samples of wastewater, combining them into a single container. This ‘composite’ sample is a true representation of the average chemical load of the effluent from the site, and therefore avoids potential inaccuracies and incorrect charges associated with an ad hoc manual sampling approach. 

Lymm Truck Wash is Europe’s biggest, with five gantries and washing teams cleaning around 58,000 trucks per year. This results in an effluent discharge to sewer of 26,000 cubic metres per year. United Utilities test the discharge, on average, every two weeks, issuing charges based on the measured level of dirt and cleaning agents.

Laura Cardwell, Director of Lymm Truckwash, said “The problem we had was that we were incurring a high charge if a sample was taken on, for example, a sunny Friday, when we are busiest, and a much lower charge if it was taken on a rainy Tuesday. We needed some way of being confident that we were paying the right charge.”

Laura contacted Aquamatic for advice. After a site consultation to establish where a Sampler would be best positioned and a detailed discussion to establish the operating parameters, Aquamatic recommended its weather-protected, outdoor Aquacell S320H, fitted with an automatic Self-Emptying bottling system featuring two, 4.5 litre Sample Collection Vessels. A 200ml Sample is collected automatically by the Aquacell sampling module every 45 minutes and added to one of the containers, forming a composite. The Bottler operates by rotating the two Collection Vessels so that one is always ‘filling’ and the other is always ‘full’. This means the regulatory body can collect their own sample for analysis at any time. The contents of the full container represents a range of times, including ‘busy’ and ‘quiet’ times, and delivers a truly representative measurement of the average composition of the wastewater from the site.

Laura Cardwell added: “We have been able to make direct savings in terms of our effluent charges of around 10%, a significant saving that has already more than paid for the Sampler over the time that we have had it. Lymm Truckwash is also situated on a busy motorway service station so, beyond the direct savings we have made, we have also been able to demonstrate due diligence to our landlord that we are respecting our obligations as a tenant.”

The Aquacell S320H is one of a full range of Automatic Wastewater Samplers, featuring portable and wall-mounted systems as well as both indoor and outdoor, ambient and refrigerated units with a host of Sample Collection options. Each sampler model is also configurable with numerous additional features to ensure that whatever the customers specific sampling needs are a solution can be provided.