The Real UVT meter can be used in a number
of situations when working with UV
disinfection systems. The following case
studies outline two situations in which the
Real UVT would be invaluable.
A potential customer has inquired about
employing your services to install a UV
disinfection system. You set up an
appointment for an estimate and to determine
what will be involved for the installation.
As the customer looks on, you turn on the
Real UVT meter and proceed to test a sample
of their water. Within a couple of minutes
your Real UVT meter has provided you with
the UV percent transmittance (UVT) of the
customer’s water.
Typically,
UV disinfection systems require a minimum of
75% UVT in order to operate properly and
ensure safe drinking water. If your Real UVT
reading is higher than the manufacturer’s
recommended minimum UVT, you can tell your
potential customer that you would be pleased
to install a UV disinfection system,
confident in the knowledge that your
installed UV system will work well.
However, if your Real UVT reading is lower
than the UV disinfection system
manufacturer’s recommended minimum UVT, you
know for certain that some additional
equipment will need to be installed along
with the UV disinfection system for it to
work properly. It may be as simple as
installing a filter of some kind before the
UV disinfection system, or perhaps it will
be necessary to install a larger UV
disinfection system in order to compensate
for the low UVT and thereby increase the UV
dose to the customer’s water. At this point,
it may be useful to do further analysis of
the water to determine what is actually
causing the low UVT values and proceed from
there.
Knowing the UVT of the water before
installing a UV disinfection system is
clearly essential to making educated
decisions about the installation. The
customer will be impressed with your
professional equipment and thoroughness
adding to the customer’s confidence in your
services.
An existing customer is experiencing a
problem with his UV disinfection system.
Perhaps, the system is in alarm or maybe the
customer has received poor microbiological
test results. In either case, this indicates
that the water is not receiving a high
enough dose of UV light to disinfect the
water. This may be due to any of a number of
different factors. Perhaps the UV lamps are
reaching the end of their life and need to
be replaced, or maybe the quartz or sensor
is fouled by mineral build-up and requires
cleaning, or possibly there is some kind of
warranty issue you will need to take up with
the manufacturer, or perhaps the UVT is low
and is preventing proper UV dose to the
water. Note that the UVT may change somewhat
throughout the year.
When servicing the customer’s UV
disinfection system, the first thing you can
check is the UVT of the water with the Real
UVT meter. This allows you to immediately
determine whether the UVT of the water is
the source of the problem. If the UVT is
low, you have just saved yourself a lot of
unnecessary time and effort by not having to
dismantle the UV disinfection system. You
can now work to come up with a solution,
such as the additional installation of a
filter of some kind or other water treatment
equipment. If the UVT tested high, then you
have ruled out UVT as the problem, and spent
only a couple of minutes doing it. You may
now move on to servicing the system further.
Without a Real UVT meter, you can spend
several hours dismantling a UV disinfection
system without finding the problem. Then a
water sample must be sent to a lab, where
after several days and probably a small fee,
it might finally be determined that you have
a UVT problem. In the meantime, your
customer and you are in the dark as to the
problem and even worse your customer has
been without properly disinfected water for
several days before you even begin to solve
the problem. Clearly the Real UVT can save
significant headaches in this situation.
