Advanced Sensors managing director Khalid Thabeth reveals how partnerships and excellent service have resulted in producing a range of maintenance free oil in water analysers.
Advanced Sensors was established in June 2005 and has seen its products continue to develop to global popularity. Based in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Advanced Sensors have a laboratory and offices, which customers are encouraged to visit.
Mr Thabeth explained that, based at these facilities, “Our laboratory is staffed with a broad base of highly skilled professionals including Photonic specialists that are responsive to the diverse challenges of our customers.”
Faced with the challenges of water discharge, reinjection and process management, Advanced Sensors have developed a range of oil in water analysers. Historically the measurement of oil in water was performed manually in a laboratory, four to six times a day. The Advanced Sensors EX range of oil in water analysers measure continuously; providing measurement in real time to facilitate the dynamic management of the process, these measured values are recorded within the instrument for ten years.
Customers are also benefiting from the extensive dynamic measurement range of the instrument, at 0ppm – 20,000ppm. Mr Thabeth said: “Placing the analysers at the end of the process and within the process between separator stages etc; provides real time process visibility and facilitates the efficient management of the process, helping to identify process bottle necks for correction to increase production.”
The EX range of analysers use a Windows XP-based operating system, providing a robust platform for the instrument. Mr Thabeth said: “Windows was chosen to provide a familiar environment for people to operate the instrument, making the instrument’s use largely self intuitive and easily accessible.”
Providing the installation has internet capability, the analysers can be connected to enable remote access from anywhere in the world. The analysers and the oil in water levels can be analysed from afar, which is a great advantage when the instruments are placed in extreme environments.
Remote access coupled with support staff enables Advanced Sensors to offer an extremely responsive customer support capability. Mr Thabeth said: “If a customer finds any inexplicable anomalies they can call on Advanced Sensors 24 hours a day to log into the system and run tests. What’s really unique is that no other equipment does this – the analysers have an integrated state-of-the-art Ultra Violet florescent spectrometer that can not only detect how much oil is in the water, but other properties or chemicals used in the process. Once process anomalies have been identified, Advanced Sensors can isolate them from the results.”
Explaining the benefits further, Mr Thabeth said: “The use of chemical additives is of great interest and the instrument goes a long way in satisfying this interest. Knowing in real time the affects of injected process chemicals will improve the efficient use of chemicals and save significant costs. To do this the analyser has to be capable of measuring oil accurately without being affected by the chemicals themselves; the unique use of a full scan spectrometer in the EX1000 facilitates this.”
These performance and design successes have meant that the interest in the analyser has growing rapidly. Mr Thabeth said: “We obviously knew there was a global market, but we didn’t realise how quickly it would come to the fore, over 125 systems have now been deployed. In the last 24 months the company has appointed agencies around the globe in order to provide local and responsive customer support.”
Advanced Sensors will launch two new products in 2009, including a new self-cleaning analyser with a microscopy feature to measure solid and droplet size distribution and content.
