Adept Pure Water, a specialist in water purification equipment, has supplied a centralised laboratory system to certified reference materials (CRMs) provider Altus Science. Altus Science provides CRMs for a variety of industries focusing on calibration standards for total organic carbon (TOC) and conductivity analysers. Fundamental to that business is the quality of the ultrapure water used in the production of the CRMs.
“Our quality management system required us to take daily samples to monitor water quality,” says Altus Science Managing Director Graham Roscoe. “Our original system wasn’t coping and it became obvious that we had to upgrade.” Roscoe consulted Adept Pure Water. “I felt that we could work together as partners. Adept would allow us input to develop a system that would be right for our application.”
Adept's engineers designed a bespoke system for Altus Science consisting of a twin-pass Eco RO reverse osmosis system and a polishing ring main. The deionised water is delivered to a PVDF storage tank and is continuously recirculated via a PVDF ring main to points of use in the quality & R&D laboratory and the production laboratory. The ring main includes a 185nm UV irradiation lamp, which oxidises trace organic matter, followed by a cylinder containing UltraClean ion exchange resin.
The resin achieves the highest quality water with TOC less than 1μg/L and conductivity <0.1µS/cm. The new water purification system was installed in April 2017 and commissioned in July, and is provided with online monitoring of resistivity and TOC, significantly reducing the need for sampling and analysis.
