Water quality monitoring is crucial in pharmaceutical production. Whether used as raw material or for formulation, processing, reagents, intermediates, or cleaning, water plays a fundamental role in GMP processes and must be monitored accordingly. Two critical quality attributes that require monitoring according to the US Pharmacopeia in USP Water for Pharmaceutical Purposes are TOC and conductivity. These measurements are used to demonstrate compliance to regulations and control processes.

Regulation changes for MPP facilities are rapidly approaching and these facilities need to ensure their wastewater treatment processes are removing nitrogen to meet the proposed EPA limits. The Sievers TOC-R3 can continuously monitor nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment to ensure treatment performance in real time. This allows operators to immediately take action if the treatment train is not removing nitrogen to the efficiency it needs to.

In the wastewater treatment process, secondary biological treatment is used to remove dissolved organic matter using microorganisms. A common practice for determining the performance of this treatment is the Food to Microorganism ratio (F:M). To determine the food (F) portion of the ratio, total organic carbon (TOC) analysis can provide more accurate and reliable data than other methods to reduce risk of regulatory non-compliance and help optimize secondary biological treatment.

Litehouse, Inc. is a food and beverage (F&B) manufacturer located in Lowell, Michigan that generates an average of 75,000 gallons of wastewater a day. The treated wastewater generated at the facility then flows to the Lowell Wastewater Treatment Plant and must meet local discharge limits.

What TOC monitoring mode is best for your use case? Learn more about the differences between each.