At Agur's Jurancon site, operations teams needed continuous, on-site water quality visibility on sensitive indicators such as BTX, turbidity and COD, where delayed readings can slow reaction to contamination events and increase operational risk. Badger Meter addressed this requirement with an online UV-Vis spectrometry solution combining the spectro::lyser V3 probe and the con::cube data manager, enabling real-time measurements, centralized data handling and faster deviation detection.
Description of the use case / service / project
Context and monitoring objective
This application describes a continuous water-quality monitoring requirement at Agur's Jurancon site, where the operating team needs rapid, reliable field information to keep processes under control and anticipate potential pollution events.
Problem / Need: continuous on-site control of sensitive parameters
Water quality can fluctuate quickly due to process drifts, upstream disturbances or accidental contamination. For this site, the priority was to ensure continuous, on-site monitoring with a strong focus on:
BTX (benzene, toluene, xylenes): sensitive organic compounds requiring early detection and trending.
Turbidity: a key indicator of suspended matter variations impacting downstream treatment performance.
COD (chemical oxygen demand): a proxy for organic load, used to detect abnormal organic pollution and optimize treatment response.
Intermittent sampling or delayed laboratory results can create a time gap between the onset of a deviation and corrective action. This can:
Delay operational decisions (process adjustments, isolation, alarms and escalation).
Increase the probability of non-compliant discharge or degraded treated-water quality depending on the process context.
Raise operational risk by reducing the ability to anticipate incidents early.
Technical requirements expressed by the site
Reliable continuous measurements suitable for field use (24/7 monitoring).
Fast response to deviations to support early warning and incident anticipation.
Robust instrumentation appropriate for long-term operation.
Rapid data exploitation: centralized management and efficient data transmission to support decision-making.
Solution / Response: UV-Vis online spectrometry with centralized data management
Badger Meter deployed an optical spectrometry-based continuous monitoring configuration built around:
spectro::lyser V3 (UV-Vis spectrometer probe) for real-time water-quality monitoring.
con::cube as the data manager for measurement handling and data transmission.
Why UV-Vis spectrometry fits continuous BTX, turbidity and COD monitoring
The spectro::lyser V3 uses UV-Vis spectrometry to analyze water quality parameters in real time and can be configured to derive multiple indicators (including COD and turbidity, and BTX depending on configuration), supporting continuous trending and early event detection in operational environments.
Operational benefits achieved at the site
Continuous on-site tracking of sensitive indicators, reducing dependence on intermittent sampling for day-to-day visibility.
Parameter selection and configuration should match the water matrix and site objectives (e.g., event detection vs. process optimization).
Installation approach (in-situ vs. flow-cell / monitoring station) should be chosen based on hydraulics, accessibility and maintenance strategy.
Data integration (local supervision, remote access, alarm management) should be defined early so that real-time data leads to actionable operational workflows.
spectro::lyser V3