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Central Arkansas Water’s mission is to enhance the quality of life for Central Arkansas by delivering high-quality drinking water and dependable service that exceed customer expectations; protecting and ensuring a long-term water supply for future generations; and serving as responsible stewards of public health, utility resources, and the environment.
As part of their effort to fulfill their noble mission, Central Arkansas Water’s Jack Wilson Plant is making a voluntary application to the Partnership for Safe Drinking Water. This program provides a new measure of public health protection as it encourages performance improvements beyond regulatory requirements. To this end they have collected data, conducted a self-assessment and are working towards further system optimization. During this process, they identified inefficiencies within their process turbidity workflow. One operator would spend six to eight hours per week cleaning their process turbidimeters. That’s an entire shift’s worth of time dedicated to cleaning instrumentation. In addition to the cleaning regime, the plant issued a standard operating procedure to collect a manual grab sample every four hours. There had to be a better solution.
After issuing a request for proposals and running a trial, they selected the Lovibond PTV Series process turbidimeters. Instrument Technician II Alan Dickey says, “This is the only turbidity meter I have ever seen that worked correctly right out of the box.” To their delight, the plant continued to reap benefits from their decision to implement the instruments. The instruments were easy to install, are easy to use and require little maintenance. Instruments are now cleaned quarterly in conjunction with regularly scheduled calibrations. This more efficient workflow freed six to eight hours of time a week for other operating duties.
The plant continues to run monthly dry verifications on the turbidimeters based on their experience with other instruments. They have found the PTV Series instruments deliver consistent, reliable data. So reliable in fact, they retired their every-four-hours grab sample SOP. Plant operators appreciate the hands-off dependability of the instruments and the time saved to perform critical job functions.
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