Facing stringent water quality goals, water treatment plant operators hate playing “catch-up” while watching the sedimentation basin turbidity rise along with filter effluent.  Standard operating procedures amongst operators would agree that a little overfeed in coagulant is easier on daily operations than trying to underfeed especially when the coagulant choice is a PACl. A proven alternative to this SOP is to use streaming current measurement to continuously monitor the charge demand of the raw water and the amount of coagulant the plant is feeding.

“Using streaming current to monitor our water treatment process has been one of the greatest cost savings measures the plant has experienced.” – Michael Griffith

After evaluating an on-line streaming current monitor, Tennessee-American Water/Sequatchie Valley WTP operations in Whitwell purchased a HyroACT 600 with DuraTrac sensor to help optimize their water treatment process in January 2015.  Chief Operator, Denny Long, quickly noticed a reduction in the amount of PACl the plant used to treat their river water source.   Subsequent to the PACl reduction, the plant also noticed a reduction in the amount of sludge the plant was producing. Estimating annual operating costs, Operations Supervisor, Michael Griffith believes that the plant can save as much as $30,000 per month in sludge disposal costs and recover two days of labor in sludge handling.