TOC excursions are quite commonly transient events. Can the PAT700 help get to root-cause and diagnose the source of the TOC contamination?

Yes. The PAT700 TOC Analyzer uses its Excursion Capture feature to capture a sample of the water containing the TOC excursion so that further analysis to find root cause can be done in the laboratory.

TOC excursions can be caused by a range of issues. Sometimes the TOC spike can be caused by a venture effect at a point of use, where water is sucked back into the water system for a fraction of a second when the point of use is turned on. Sometimes biofilm will slough-off from the inside of the water loop when the water loop pressure changes. Sometimes the sanitization program causes biofilm to slough-off from the inside of the water loop. If any of these events are the cause of the TOC excursion, then they will be transient in nature and difficult to get to root cause. The user can set an excursion alarm point in the PAT700. If this excursion alarm point is passed, then the PAT700 can be programmed to automatically capture a sample of the water for later analysis in the root-cause investigation in the laboratory. Additionally, the PAT700 has on-board grab sample analysis auto-sampler. Allowing users to take grab samples from various points in the water loop and conduct TOC analysis on the PAT700 using the on-board auto-sampler to help find the source of the TOC spike and hence support root-cause investigations.