MCERTS in the process industries

Gareth Dean, general manager ABB Instrumentation Products examines the challenges for process operators facing up to the new regulations: 

MCERTS is the Environment Agency’s Monitoring Certification Scheme, which is designed to ensure that the equipment and systems that are supposed to tell us about the quality and quantity of industrial discharges are doing their job properly. The scheme is well established in a number of sectors, though it is at a relatively early stage of being applied to the process sector.

The main criticism that people levy at MCERTS is that it is too expensive and smaller manufacturers find the cost prohibitive. It’s true that it is expensive, but it is an important investment not dissimilar to the CE Mark of old which was subject to similar criticisms, but is now universally accepted as an important standard.

MCERTS is an issue in any processes that still fall under Integrated Pollution Control, any processes making consented discharges regulated through the Water Resources Act and sites falling under the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. The regulations cover a wide range of industries such as food and beverage, metal processing plants, mineral industries e.g. production of cement and lime and the chemical industry.

To obtain their PPC (Pollution Prevention and Control) permits, companies will already have had to tell the Environment Agency about the nature, quantities and sources of planned emissions. Many companies will have established a formal environmental management system to demonstrate compliance with their permits, perhaps working to a standard such as ISO14001.

But whatever procedures companies may have in place, there is an old truism that applies here: you can’t control what you can’t measure. Having the right instrumentation and monitoring systems installed and operating correctly is the only way you – and the regulator - can really be sure that you are complying with all the terms of your permit. And under PPC, you need to be using the Best Available Techniques (BATs) for doing so.

An MCERTS-certified product can enable an end user to demonstrate that the instrumentation systems they are using constitute BAT. Equipment manufacturers will have their products tested and certified independently to show that they can deliver the required accuracy, repeatability and so on. If there is an MCERTS registered option for the parameter they want to measure, end users will be obliged to use it.

Buying an MCERTS registered instrument will not be the end of the story for end users however, because they will also have to ensure that it’s properly installed, set-up and maintained. The overall installation will need to be inspected by an MCERTS-registered inspector to ensure it complies with Environment Agency requirements.

MCERTS can deliver positive benefits to all the key stakeholders particularly as a standard to enable industry to meet certain environmental requirements. Certified products help industry comply and give purchasers the certainty that the products they are buying are up to a certain standard. Ambiguity costs the sector a lot of money. Schemes like these are the only way to have this level of certainty and protection.

Even the instrument suppliers, who must bear the brunt of initial cost increases as they apply to have their products certified, will benefit in the long run. By having good engineering practice enshrined in regulatory requirements, responsible practitioners can be sure that they are operating on a level playing field and end users know what they are getting.

Ultimately of course, it’s the environment that will benefit, and that’s good news for all of us. MCERTS support the EA’s Modernising Regulation Agenda, which places increasing emphasis on self-monitoring by all potential polluters. The scheme should help ensure that the industry’s efforts at self-monitoring are transparent and credible.

Suppliers acknowledge that it can be difficult to get to grips with these new standards and try to help customers understand them. It is important for manufacturers to share their knowledge of new standards with their customers and hope to help further through articles and fact sheets over the coming months.

All manufacturers should think about this standard as a matter of urgency as it is gaining momentum and MCERTS-certified products will be able to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.