Single Point Sludge Blanket Level Detector

Markland’s simple and effective single point monitoring and automatic control to maintain your preferred sludge blanket and supernatant interface level.

Optional delay-off timer is available to help you fine-tune your control

• Access the added advantage that helps reduce wear-and-tear on pumps.

Features

• Simple installation
• No moving parts
• Compact design makes it ideal for obstructed/constricted applications, such as lamella clarifiers
• Adjustable sludge concentration set-point control enables LED beam intensity to be modified to detect liquid-solids interface levels in thick or thin sludges, or in light flocs
• Adjustable response time or damping
• Sludge relay indicates that sludge has been detected by the probe
• Advanced self-diagnostics
• Optional delay-off timer

     Available with the sensor on a rigid pipe mount or hanging from a cable

How it works

The optical probe of the Sludge Sleuth™ is located at the preferred sludge interface high-level point.
Every second, a LED transmits a pulse of infrared light across a gap in the probe. A phototransistor sensor on the other side of the gap receives the beam of light. If the gap contains air or clear liquid, the detector reads the suspended solids concentration as zero. When suspended solids are encountered in the gap, some beam energy is absorbed.

The Sludge Sleuth™ monitors these changes in beam intensity. When it detects that suspended solids have reached a predetermined concentration, it illuminates a LED on its controller and activates a relay that can be used to send an alert to the operator and/or turn on the desludge pumps or valves.

A concentration control allows operators to make adjustments for thick or thin silt, sludge, and slurries, or light flocs.
An adjustable damping control enables operators to modify the response time setting, customizing the period in which the predetermined solids concentration set-point must be continuously present before the meter takes action.
The Sludge Sleuth™ probe is monitored by self-diagnostics, which turn on local and remote alarms in the unlikely event of a problem with its operation.

A NEMA 4X enclosure allows the detector to be installed anywhere except hazardous locations.

Applications

Single point detection of settled bed levels in:

• gravity settlers, including circular and rectangular clarifiers
• sedimentation basins
• inclined plate separators
• decanting tanks
• DAF units (dissolved air flotation tanks)
• SBRs (sequential batch reactors)
• batch processes
• sumps and pits

This list provides a few examples of the material able to be detected by this Markland product:

• silt, sludge, and biosolids in primary and secondary clarifiers
• backwash sludge from sand or membrane filters
• resin in water softener intake tanks
• settled mud in tanks
• fly-ash from scrubbers
• grit in sumps and pits