APPLICATION PROBLEMS COMMONLY SOLVED

Wastewater Treatment

Lift Station Levels
Contact level instruments get build-up from grease, hair and other media. Mechanical floats stick on top of levels and trip high alarms. Capacitance probes become coated and give false alarms. Noncontact ultrasonic transducers have difficulty measuring through condensate.

Wet Well Levels:
Cobweb build-up interferes with ultrasonic measurement. Ladders, pump guide rails, and other metal objects create false targets for ultrasonic transmitters. Mechanical floats become tangled with other obstructions within the well. Capacitance probes read inaccurately when coated.

Sludge Storage Levels:
Contact measurement devices become coated and fail. Ultrasonic transmitters lose accuracy when fog is present or ambient temperatures are changing quickly. Direct sunlight on the exposed transducer at top of tank causes sporadic readings.

Anaerobic Digester Sludge Levels:
Determining sludge levels enclosed in digester tanks without visual confirmation is difficult. Ultrasonics used to measure tank cover travel is unreliable because of the ambient conditions’ effect on the transducer. Ultrasonics cannot measure under the tank cover due to the heavy surface foam.

Effluent Open Channel Flows:
Capacitance probes can not accurately be calibrated. Ultrasonic transmitters have trouble whenever fog or condensate is present. Turbulence in discharge stream creates problems.

Clarifier Sludge Blanket Levels:
Plant operators can not get an accurate or a consistent measurement with a sludge judge. An ultrasonic transmitter is not able to read sludge blanket levels. Plant not sure when to waste.

Water Treatment

Raw Water Flow Measurement:
The original orifice plate or venturi no longer accurate. Large pipe size makes it cost prohibitive to install a magmeter. Isolating flow to install a new meter is difficult. Minimal straight piping run.

Clearwell / Finished Water Levels:
Current level pressure transmitters drift and are losing accuracy. This level measurement is important since it can help determine chlorine contact time. Other than manually changing the well levels, there is not a good way to determine if the instrument requires recalibration.

Chlorine Feed Control:
Chlorine feed rate requires continual adjustment resulting in unstable chlorine levels and high use of dechlorination chemicals. Control valves are old and difficult to rebuild, as well as expensive.