May 25, 2010 — GE announces Sievers InnovOx On-Line Total Organic Carbon (TOC) Analyzer to allow users to analyze challenging water samples on a routine basis without requiring excessive preventive maintenance. Monitoring the levels of TOC in the water is an important step for industrial users to control processes that are critical to their operations and to comply with regulations. The Sievers InnovOx offers increased uptime and instrument reliability, two important features when it comes to analyzing difficult industrial samples. It has been designed by GE Power & Water’s analytical instruments unit for the petrochemical, petroleum, pulp and paper and food and beverage markets, as well as environmental organizations and municipalities.
The InnovOx On-Line, like its InnovOx Laboratory model predecessor, uses an innovative Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) technique that offers enhanced reliability, greater ease of use and lower maintenance than other TOC analyzers available today. By utilizing SCWO, the InnovOx is the TOC instrument most capable of cost effectively analyzing difficult industrial process, environmental and wastewater samples on a routine basis. SCWO has historically been used to treat large volumes of aqueous waste streams, sludges and contaminated soils. GE is the first company to use this technique in a commercially available TOC analyzer. The first commercial application for the new InnovOx On-Line TOC Analyzer is monitoring seawater in Taiwan.
The seawater, which contains about 3 percent sodium chloride, is used as industrial process water, and both incoming and outgoing water streams need to be monitored for environmental protection. One of the main sources of contamination can be hydrocarbons coming from a petrochemical refining process. The InnovOx's robust handling of the brine sample was a significant factor in the analyzer's selection.