Wellington Water is one of the largest water infrastructure service providers in New Zealand. Established in 2014, they are co-owned by 6 councils and have approximately 200 full time employees. Their role is to manage the drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater services of their constituent councils.
Wellington Water began a programme to recommission fluoride dosing at Te Marua and Gear Island water treatment plants in March 2022. While there were existing online fluoride monitors in place, operators were unhappy with the maintenance effort involved and they were approaching end of life. The decision was made to upgrade the existing online monitoring before the dosing recommenced.
Wellington Water approached Applied Instruments regarding the ATI Q46F/D Direct Fluoride Monitor. Due to its high reliability, low cost, and ease of maintenance it was an excellent fit for their requirements.
A trial site of Gear Island was selected, and an initial trial period of 4 weeks was agreed upon between both parties to ensure that the ATI analyser was working reliably. During this period, the data from the two ATI analysers as well as the two reagent-based analysers that were already in place at Gear Island was recorded and checked regularly for any deviations.
Once the ATI analysers were in place and had been calibrated against an independent device, lab testing by Eurofins showed that the two analysers were tracking very accurately. With the trial being a success, the remaining 9 analysers were scheduled for installation and commissioning.
