pH and ORP Sensors for Pharmaceutical Applications

Current trend for increasing mercury awareness throughout the public sector has caused the government to take action. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has focused their efforts on controlling mercury levels produced in various coal fired power plants. Based on information from several case studies, the EPA developed the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to cut back mercury emissions. The most popular technology utilized by coal plants to meet the new standards is a scrubber which cleans the off gas from the combustion process. ORP sensors can further monitor the effluent from these scrubbers to ensure optimal mercury emission levels are achieved. By closely monitoring the mercury concentrations in the effluent, plant managers will be able to easily confirm their plants are meeting the EPA's standards.

The lifetime of a pH sensor has a significant impact on the overall annual costs of a pH measuring loop. Optimizing four key factors will decrease these costs and optimize process control and overall plant efficiency.

Kind of. Calibration itself will not extend the life of a sensor, however, a sensor that is not calibrated properly can cause unreliable measurements - that are often misdiagnosed leading to unnecessary replacements.

Optimizing the maintenance cycle is not always straightforward. In some cases, cleaning once a week is sufficient and other processes may require every 8 hours.

Learning these four lessons will help you improve your engineering skills and most importantly extend the life of your pH sensors.

Select the correct pH glass and reference type to improve your pH sensor lifetime and you can limit or even eliminate the effects of temperature and pressure on especially the reference sensor.