How smart watering monitoring solutions from Bürkert can save time and money

Providing clean drinking water is a priority for utility companies worldwide. But maintaining water quality can be a laborious and time-consuming activity. Which is why Kempsey Shire Council in New South Wales, Australia, turned to Bürkert for an altogether more modern approach using the innovative Bürkert type 8905 smart water monitoring system.

At the Kempsey Shire Council’s South West Rocks recycled water treatment plant, located 350 km north of Sydney, Australia, the final treatment of effluent includes ultra-filtration, UV disinfection and the addition of chlorine. All of which are required to achieve the necessary standards of water quality.

To ensure water quality standards are maintained, the shire council uses a monitoring station equipped with pH and chlorine sensors. However, not only did this ageing system use reagents to establish measurements, but it was also becoming unreliable and burdensome in terms of its maintenance schedule.

As fate would have it, a chance meeting between Bürkert’s experts and representatives of the plant was about to set the wheels in motion for a smart water monitoring system that would blow the plant’s traditional water monitoring practices clean out of the water.

Bürkert Type 8905 Online Analysis System

“We were in the process of looking at potential markets for one of our latest innovations and happened to be talking to representatives at the treatment works,” explains Michael Coleman, Area Sales Manager for Bürkert. “We had an opportunity to discuss the features and benefits of our Online Analysis System Type 8905 for water at a time when they were experiencing a few issues with their own installation.”

Several factors swung the vote towards the Bürkert 8905. One of the first was its compact modular design, which provides flexible installations. Its components consist of an integrated HMI display, input/output modules, sensor cubes and a cleaning system; all of which can be wall or panel mounted. Or, as in Kempsey’s case, built into an existing cabinet.

Once installed, the individual sensor modules or “cubes” are “plug and play” on a dedicated backplane. That meant that engineers from the treatment plant had their smart water monitoring system up and running in no time. Setting up alarm parameters for each sensor cube is also a mercifully straightforward process, so any anomaly in the process is quickly identified.

High-performance smart water monitoring

The Bürkert Type 8905 can communicate with existing control protocols and personnel on and off site, ensuring any deviation from the water quality criteria is alerted immediately. This helps to reduce the time between a deviation from parameters and the remedial action needed to resolve matters.

“We are very pleased with the new system,” said Greg Morrow, Instrument Technician, at the South West Rocks plant. “Since it was installed, there has been no need to recalibrate the chlorine or the pH sensor cubes and their performance has been verified using portable laboratory equipment such as a DPD1 photometer reference test for free chlorine.

“Furthermore, the sensors’ response time to changes in our process has been virtually instant, far exceeding the performance of the alternatives we looked at.”

“After ten months in operation, the accuracy has been excellent; there has been no drift in either the chlorine or the pH measurements,” added fellow Instrument Technician, Tristan Nowland. “Additionally, the amperometric chlorine MEMS sensor chip is not affected by chloramines, providing true chlorine analysis.

“Another major benefit is the fact that the cubes are not reagent-based, and so the maintenance requirement for this system is greatly reduced. The Bürkert system is very advanced. The initial investment came at a higher value, however, the reduction in maintenance resources required, meant that the investment has been worth it.”

Tap into the power of the Bürkert 8905

The installation at South West Rocks highlights several advantages of the Bürkert 8905 smart water monitoring system to the municipal water sector. It’s compact footprint and modular design allows each system to match the requirements of the application. The ability to maintain accuracy without repeated calibrations has also delivers significant time and cost savings.

For more information, please contact Bürkert today.