Corrosion Coupons vs. Corrosion Rate Sensors: Why Waiting 90 Days to Find Out Is a Problem
Most cooling tower and chiller operators find out about a corrosion problem in one of two ways: a coupon comes back from the lab with a number that’s already 60 or 90 days old, or a leak develops and the corrosion has already been happening for months. Both are after-the-fact. Neither tells you what was […]
On/Off, Proportional, PID, and Fuzzy Logic Control: How Each One Behaves in the Real World
Every dosing pump, bleed valve, or injector in a water treatment system runs on one of four control strategies: on/off, proportional, PID, or fuzzy logic. Most operators never choose one deliberately — they inherit whatever came bundled with the controller and only notice a problem once conductivity starts swinging wildly, a discharge line drifts out […]
Why Your pH Reading Keeps Drifting: The Reference Electrode Problem Nobody Talks About
Every time a pH reading drifts, the glass bulb gets blamed. The operator recalibrates, the drift comes back within days, and eventually someone replaces the whole sensor. Nine times out of ten, the glass electrode was never the problem — a pattern we see repeatedly across process plants in Malaysia. The reference electrode is. Across […]
Hydrofluoric Acid and Standard pH Sensors: Why Glass Electrodes Fail and What to Use Instead
Put a standard glass pH electrode into a hydrofluoric acid stream and you are on a countdown. It might read fine for a few days. Then the slope drops, the response slows, and eventually the bulb itself starts to look etched or frosted. By the time someone pulls the sensor for inspection, the glass is […]
Why 90% of pH Sensor Failures Come from the Reference Cell — and How the LECOL B65 Fixes This
The glass membrane of a pH sensor rarely fails. Under normal operating conditions, a good pH glass membrane will last 2–5 years before its sensitivity degrades below useful limits. The reference cell, on the other hand, fails constantly — and in contaminated, hard, or chemically aggressive water, it fails quickly. Industry data on pH sensor […]
Why Standard pH Sensors Fail in Ultrapure Water — and What the LECOL B64 Does Differently
A standard pH sensor placed in ultrapure water does not measure the pH of the water. It measures a drifting, unstable number that is influenced by the sensor’s own reference cell leaching ions into the sample, by CO₂ absorption at the liquid junction, and by the extremely low ionic strength of the water itself. The […]
How to Measure Bacteria in Metalcutting Coolant — and When to Act
A metalcutting coolant that smells like rotten eggs on Monday morning is already in serious trouble. The hydrogen sulphide odour is produced by anaerobic bacteria that have been multiplying in the sump over the weekend, without agitation, in the absence of oxygen. By the time the smell is obvious, bacterial counts are in the billions […]
When Chemical Compatibility Charts Are Not Enough: The Case for System-Level Chemical Validation
Chemical compatibility charts give you a starting point. They do not tell you whether your specific system will fail. The chart says EPDM is compatible with 30% sulphuric acid — and it may be, under the test conditions used to generate that data. Those conditions may not match your operating temperature, your concentration, your exposure […]
What Happens When You Run a Boiler Monitoring System Without a Sample Cooler
Every boiler feedwater and steam condensate analyser on the market — including the Pyxis Guardian IK-2000 series — specifies that it must be installed downstream of a sample cooler. This requirement is stated prominently in the installation documentation, with operating temperature limits of 40–49°C at the sensor inlet. In practice, sample coolers are frequently omitted […]
Why Cation Conductivity Tells You More Than Standard Conductivity in a Boiler System
Standard conductivity measurement is one of the most common parameters in boiler feedwater and steam condensate monitoring. It is fast, inexpensive, and gives a useful general indication of total dissolved solids. But in power generation and co-generation applications, standard conductivity has a significant limitation: it cannot reliably distinguish between contaminants that are genuinely corrosive and […]