This InstMC Central North-West Local Section tech-talk is by Ben Thompson who won the inaugural ‘InstMC Central Northwest - Early Career Engineer Award’ for 2024. Ben will present his submitted project which was pivotal for him to be awarded the winner despite tough competition from other candidates.

Ben is an Instrumentation Field Service Engineer for United Utilities, joining as an apprentice in 2013 and qualifying fulltime in 2017. Primarily Ben deals with instrumentation and control systems but does have a special interest in analytical measuring devices such as wet chemistry analysers and optical based technologies.

He tells us anything that the Water Industry would call a quality instrument is for him, and that he is blessed with the curse of always asking 'Why? Let's try to make it even better!'.

Ben is just about to submit his Incorporated Engineer application to The Institute of Measurement and Control and following that will be working towards chartership in the coming years.

Project Synopsis
Measurement of critical parameters via the use of wet chemistry analysers is vital for many industries, whether for control or monitoring purposes. Inherently such analysers come with high totex costs - a high value, highly accurate analyser paired with precious labour hours and sensitive reagents. For many industries the investment is worth it, sometimes though, an application can be simply too aggressive for a cost effective, reliable measurement. One bad measurement of a process variable can have severe consequences on a plant or process. As a proof of concept this project:

• Successfully measured both total phosphate and orthophosphate
• Utilising optical lens based technology
• Reagent free
• Direct insertion into aggressive processes (ie: of wastewater treatment works inlet)
• Estimated significant totex cost saving

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