Our Most Advanced Portable Water Quality Laboratory: Wagtech™ Potalab+
What is the Potalab+ used for?
The Wagtech™ Potalab+ is ideally suited to long term water quality monitoring and professional monitoring in rural locations. The precision and flexibility of the kit enables water to be monitored in diverse and challenging environments, all over the world.
The key application for the Potalab is for deployment as a stand-alone laboratory in a drinking water provision system. It is normally found in systems which have water intake, treatment, storage and distribution infrastructure, where the more sophisticated analysis techniques allow close control of drinking water supply from catchment to tap.
Furthermore, the portable components of the Potalab can be used at the household level to ensure that supplied water remains potable up until the moment that it is drunk. There is increasing focus on this crucial last step part of the water supply chain with the aim of ensuring that users do not contaminate their water before drinking.
To visit the Potalab+ product page click here.
What is included in the Potalab+ kit?
The Wagtech™ Potalab+ includes all the equipment and accessories required for long term water quality monitoring.
Wagtech™ Microbiological test system
The biological quality of the water is often the most important to establish. Exposure to microbial pathogens, such as cholera, can have rapid adverse effects on health.The Potatech features a microbiological testing system in which a water sample is vacuum filtered using a simple hand pump.
The filter membrane catches any bacteria and is then removed and positioned on top a nutrient source in a petri dish.
The petri dish is placed in a small portable incubator.
After incubation, depending upon the nutrients provided, each viable bacteria can grow to form a colony in the petri dish. These are simply counted to determine how many of the relevant bacteria were present in the original water sample.
Palintest Wagtech™ Incubator
The Wagtech™ Incubator has been specifically designed for field use, enabling microbiological testing in the most challenging of environments. With a high sample capacity, suitable for thermotolerant/faecal coliforms and total coliforms, up to 20 samples can be incubated at a time. There are various options for powering the incubator including using the 12V lead acid battery included in the kit. Using this, the digital incubator is can complete five full cycles between charges.
The Wagtech Potalab contains two incubators, this both increases throughput and can allow for incubation at different temperatures simultaneously.
Lumiso Expert Photometer
The Lumiso Expert Photometer is used for testing for ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and chlorine (free, total and combined). Tablet reagents are used which develop a colour when they react with the target chemical species. Lumiso then precisely measures the intensity of that colour and displays the result as a concentration of that chemical.
Over 65 other chemical parameters could be tested for on the Lumiso Expert by obtaining the appropriate reagents from Palintest.
Full, step by step, illustrated instructions for each test can be displayed onscreen.
Turbimeter Plus
Turbidity refers to the cloudiness or haziness of water caused by individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye but can scatter light.
Turbid water can provide conceal microorganisms, making it more difficult for disinfection processes (e.g., chlorination) to effectively eliminate harmful bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Suspended particles in turbid water may also carry or be associated with chemical contaminants. These contaminants can interfere with disinfection process, reducing the effectiveness and generating potentially harmful byproducts.
The Wagtech Potalab+ is one of the only kits to offer digital testing for turbidity, ensuring accuracy and reliability. The human eye can only detect turbidity to around 5 NTU, whereas the Turbimeter Plus has a resolution down to 0.01 NTU.
Micro 800 Multiparameter Meter
A high specification electrochemical meter is included for precise results. The instrument can measure pH, Temperature, Oxidation-Reduction Potential (ORP), Conductivity and TDS. Of these it is pH and Conductivity that are usually included in any water monitoring plan.
Whilst pH itself is not a direct health concern, extremely low or high pH can affect palatability. It may indicate the presence of other contaminants and it can affect water treatment processes such as chlorination, which is less effective at high pH.
Conductivity is a measure of how well water conducts an electric current. This is directly related to the concentration of dissolved ions (known as Total Dissolved Solids or TDS). The Micro 800 can therefore also be set to give a direct TDS reading. Measuring conductivity provides a simple way of measuring salinity levels and it can be a warning trigger. If a sudden spike in conductivity occurs, it could suggest a contamination event or changes in the source of the drinking water.