Online instruments help water utilities control water treatment operations. CEO Rick Bacon of Aqua Metrology Systems explains how utilities rely on sensors to meet water quality compliance standards and optimize operational performance in the May/June 2019 issue of World Water.

As regulatory requirements and the availability of more accurate diagnostic technologies continue to push the legal threshold limit of contaminants, utilities are turning to high-frequency data to identify contaminant threats and diagnose critical treatment system performance. Learn how El Paso Water’s Upper Valley Water Treatment Plant met regulatory requirements with the help of AMS’s MetalGuard™ automated, online arsenic analyzer.

The rapid response benchtop THM-RR™ analyzer provides fast, reliable and accurate analysis of individual and total THM concentrations. For water treatment operators, consulting engineers and THM treatment system vendors the THM-RR delivers valuable THM performance data far faster than external laboratories.

Aqua Metrology Systems has partnered with Foundation Instruments, Inc. to expand its offerings of online and real-time monitoring of trihalomethanes (THMs) with the addition of Foundation Instruments’ THM-Rapid Response (THM-RR) online benchtop analyzer. The benchtop analyzer reports individual and total THM concentrations in real‐time so that utilities can be more proactive in responding to water quality changes and managing carcinogenic disinfection by-products (DBP).

2018 was a busy year for AMS. We raised awareness about the value of real-time, online high-density data to determine the presence of water-borne contaminants and began deployment of our own patented Intelligent Water Treatment System for chromium, mercury, lead and selenium remediation. In 2019, we anticipate wider adoption of our online contaminant analyzers in North America and Europe and plan to broaden access to safe drinking water through innovative drinking and wastewater treatment technologies.

AMS announced the demonstration of its SafeGuard™ H2O Hexavalent Chromium [Cr (VI)] remediation system at California’s Hidden Valley Lake Community Services District. Real-time data on the system’s performance will be streamed live, providing transparency of the pilot study and treatment efficacy of the technology.

AMS has recently completed the successful demonstration of a proof of concept for the removal of dissolved mercury (Hg²⁺) in power plant wastewater. The SafeGuard™ H2O system offers a low-cost, reliable remediation system proven to address a range of trace metal contaminants, including ionic mercury.

The innovative SafeGuard™ H2O intelligent Hg(II) remediation system has been successfully demonstrated in a bench test study to remove ionic mercury in power plant wastewater. This novel technology generates a stannous ion reagent in-situ via an electrolytic process, providing a cost-effective alternative to highly challenging and expensive existing mercury treatment process.

The semiconductor industry has found that traditional analytical methods for complexed copper in wastewater are not fit for purpose. Complexed copper cannot be measured using ion-selective electrodes and colorimetry technology faces a number of severe challenges. Faced with the challenges of colorimetry, Samsung Austin Semiconductors (SAS) evaluated the MetalGuard™ analyzer for its potential to significantly improve safety and quality of measurements for copper wastewater streams.

MetalGuard™ is the first fully automated, online multi-stream analyzer for monitoring trace metal contaminants such as As, Cu, Cd, Zn, Cr, Fe, Ni, Co, V, U, Se, and more. The online analyzer provides high-frequency real-time data on trace metal contaminant levels in less than one hour and has a sensitivity down to 1 ppb.