In laboratories, the level of water purity will determine the application that it’s used for. The purer the water, the more sensitive the work it will aid with.

For that reason, it’s crucial that once a water purification system has been installed in your laboratory, you ensure that good working practices are maintained, so that the system can continue to function at peak performance.

Triple Red has shared their five tips for best practices on maintaining pure water levels in your laboratory.

Always Rinse Water Purification Cartridges

Water purification cartridges – particularly reverse-osmosis (RO) cartridges – should always be rinsed thoroughly before they’re used. By doing this, any preservatives for long-term storage that have been added during manufacturing can be removed.

By rinsing purification cartridges, the total organic carbons (TOC) will be reduced, and resistivity will increase, helping to keep water pure.

Be Careful When Storing Purified Water

Pure water will absorb impurities over time, with water reservoirs potentially leaching organic or ionic compounds.Therefore, when storing Type 2 water which has not yet gone through the polishing. You should never store ultrapure water, as it rapidly reduces in quality by binding with CO₂to form carbonic acid.

Use Inert Storage Containers

Ultrapure water is an excellent solvent, and it will try to bind with whatever it comes into contact with. This includes the storage container it’s kept in, which is why you should only ever use containers that are made from inert materials.

For best results for your lab experiments, you should only use freshly produced ultrapure water.

Continuously Monitor Water Quality

It’s crucial that you continuously monitor the quality of water, so that you can ensure results in your lab are both accurate and repeatable. If you don’t monitor water, then the purity level could change, which means that results from your lab work won’t be reliable. By measuring resistivity and total organic carbon (TOC), you can ensure that all impurities are accounted for.

Sanitise the Systems

Bacteria will naturally grow over time, and air will penetrate the water purification system. Try to keep this to a minimum by regularly changing the hydrophobic air filter. You should also sanitise the whole water purification system at least once a year.

Whilst it’s important that you install a water purification system in your laboratory, you need to ensure it’s continuously maintained so the water stays pure. These five tips will enable your system to successfully store water, whilst being cost-effective to run, and capable of meeting all application needs.

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