Optimos Group

Online Monitoring of Microbial Contamination in the Beverage Industry – A Game-Changing Solution Ensuring that products are free from microbial contamination is a core objective for beverage manufacturers. Traditionally, this meant manual sampling and lab analysis at various production points—an approach that, while reliable, is time-consuming and labour-intensive. Results often come days after sampling, causing delays, increasing costs, and limiting proactive contamination management. Enter the future: The #Coliminder. This advanced solution provides online, automated monitoring of microbial contamination with results in just 15 minutes!  With sampling intervals as short as 30 minutes, #Coliminder tracks emerging contamination events and microbial growth hotspots in real time. Here’s how #Coliminder is transforming beverage production: 🔹 Measures microbial enzyme activity, detecting all viable bacteria (even VBNCs) with zero false positives. 🔹 Sensitive, precise, and robust detection, tracking contamination levels far below traditional lab culture methods. 🔹 Supports plant optimization with up to 12 measurement points per device. Key Benefits: ✅ Chemical-free measurement process  ✅ Fully automated and autonomous with maintenance intervals every 1,000 measurements ✅ Able to be validated and maintained by the user, and incorporates device health monitoring for long-term reliability ✅ Annually renewable warranty This technology is already revolutionizing the way leading beverage producers maintain product safety, efficiency, and sustainability. #Innovation #BeverageIndustry #FoodSafety #Automation #Efficiency #Microbial water quality

Unique Trial Opportunity   It’s likely that you have heard about the #Coliminder and have been thinking about how it could benefit your operations by monitoring microbial contamination in real-time. You can see the benefits of monitoring contamination, automatically on-line at multiple points of your manufacturing process, and to have quantitative contamination results in 15 minutes rather than 24 hours. But you’re not sure if you believe it and you can’t afford to risk the expense of buying a #Coliminder and then finding it doesn’t work… So, how about being able to trial a Coliminder for a few weeks at very low cost? To take it for a test drive in your own premises, prove the benefits and take the risk out of a purchase or rental decision… This opportunity is real, will be limited to a very small number of potential customers and is unlikely to be available again, so if it sounds interesting, get in touch with Optimos Group quickly.

The Value of Certainty in Drinking Water Quality In the water industry, we recognise that the most significant immediate risks to human health in drinking water stem from microbial pathogens. E.coli usually serves as a primary indicator of water safety, pointing to potential fecal contamination. The costs associated with not maintaining fit-for-purpose drinking water quality are substantial and multifaceted: •   Regulatory fines and penalties •   Legal costs from lawsuits •   Increased operational and treatment expenses •   System repair and upgrade costs •   Revenue losses •   Reputation damage Given these stakes, how can Drinking Water Providers (DWPs) ensure they are delivering safe water? It's about reducing uncertainty and increasing certainty— this has immense value. Most DWPs use risk-based frameworks focusing heavily on regular monitoring to meet water quality standards. Typically, the workhorse water quality parameters, such as Free Chlorine, pH, Conductivity and Turbidity, are tracked in real-time by trained operators. However, microbial contamination, which poses the greatest immediate threat, has historically been monitored less efficiently — requiring manual sampling and often taking days for lab results, making them all but useless for real-time decision-making. Innovative Solution: #Coliminder  The #Coliminder offers a groundbreaking solution: real-time, automated microbial monitoring. This technology can provide E.coli measurements in just 15 minutes, dramatically increasing the certainty and safety of water supplies. With the capability to perform continuous checks every 30 minutes, the #Coliminder is transforming how water quality is managed. Considering the economics in Australia: •   Average annual revenue per person from drinking water: $219 •   For an urban population block of 30,000 people, typical of many regional towns, annual revenue is around $6.6 million. The annual cost of implementing a Coliminder? Less than 0.7% of the annual revenue for such a block — making it a compelling investment to consider. Increasing certainty isn't just about reducing risk; it's also about ensuring public health and preserving trust in our water systems. Interested in exploring how Coliminder can enhance your operations? Contact Phil Krasnostein at Optimos Group. #WaterQuality #PublicHealth #Innovation #UtilityManagement #RiskReduction

Our Family is Growing The Optimos Group #Coliminder family is growing. In late 2019, just before the Covid epidemic hit, we started up our first #Coliminder. Fast forward to 2024, Optimos Group has delivered and/or is responsible for 8 #Coliminders in Australia and New Zealand. Working in diverse applications including surface water monitoring, drinking water networks, stormwater harvesting, recreational water and seawater desalination, our #Coliminders collectively have the capacity to do more than 400 bacterial contamination measurements every day, each one contributing to the protection of public health, and reduction of cost and waste. We look forward to exciting new applications in food and beverage processing, healthcare, pharmaceutical manufacture and more. The #Coliminder technology is robust, reliable and accurate, and is a credit to the inventor Wolfgang Vogl and his team at ColiMinder. If you would like to learn how the #Coliminder can help you minimise microbiological risk, improve product quality and optimise manufacturing costs, please get in touch. #waterquality #onlinemonitoring #waterqualityriskmanagement #microbialwaterqualitymonitoring #beverageindustry #foodandbeverage #healthcare #pharma

A First for the #ColiMinder – Monitoring the Seawater Intake of a Large Desalination Plant During 2023, Water Corporation purchased a #ColiMinder and conducted an evaluation trial at their Water Research and Innovation Precinct, monitoring both seawater and treated wastewater for E.coli and Enterococci. Following the successful trial, Water Corporation decided to run a field trial at the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant (PSDP). Located in Kwinana, Western Australia, the PSDP started production in 2006. It currently produces around 11% of Perth's water supply. Alongside the existing online water quality monitoring instruments, the #ColiMinder is currently monitoring Enterococci bacteria in the raw seawater intake. Contact Optimos Group to learn more about the #ColiMinder’s capabilities and wide range of applications. #waterquality #seawaterdesalination #onlinemonitoring #microbialwaterquality

A Better Approach to Membrane Integrity Testing? Membranes play a crucial role in water treatment processes, serving as a sophisticated and efficient method for removing contaminants from water. Membranes are applied in filtration and purification, desalination, wastewater treatment and advanced water reclamation. The versatility and effectiveness of membranes in addressing a wide range of water quality concerns underline their importance in modern water treatment strategies. Consequently, detecting membrane failure in water treatment processes is critical to ensure the effectiveness of the treatment and the safety of the downstream products. Commonly used indicators of membrane failure include a decrease in permeate quality, an increase in permeate conductivity,  pressure differential changes and flux decline. These indicators are supplemented by various integrity tests such as pressure decay tests, bubble point tests, or forward flow tests, as well as visual inspection, automated monitoring systems and chemical monitoring. However, in most applications, one of the primary purposes of the membranes is to eliminate or substantially reduce microbial contamination in the permeate. So, what if it were possible to use direct, highly sensitive and rapid measurements of bacterial contamination as a method of monitoring membrane integrity?  Could this approach be used as a process control tool to ensure the effectiveness of the treatment and the safety of the downstream products?   The answer to this question is YES! The #Coliminder has been successfully used for monitoring membrane integrity in a Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR) wastewater treatment plant in Denmark since August 2016. At times, measuring as frequently as 72 times per day, the #ColiMinder has not only detected defective filtration modules, but has also been able to distinguish between membrane failure and bacteria growth on the permeate side of the membranes.  This project, which had the objective of achieving fully automated contamination monitoring of sewage plant discharge, was awarded the status of Best Available Technology (BAT) by Miljøstyrelsen, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.  The #Coliminder’s role has been to provide automatic warnings in case of increased contamination due to broken UF membranes. If you would like to learn more about the #ColiMinder and how it may be able to enhance your membrane based water and/or wastewater treatment systems, please get in touch. #waterquality #microbialriskmanagement #membraneintegrity #membranefiltration

Thank You, Ralph Parshall Sydney Water had been struggling to measure the outflow from the four wetland cells being used to test the effectiveness of wetlands in reducing nitrogen loads in treated wastewater from the Picton Water Recycling Plant. Small diameter magnetic flowmeters, installed below ground in a pit, were subject to blockages and bio-fouling and had been unable to reliably measure the variable gravity outflows from the wetlands cells. In late 2023, Emma James threw us a challenge. She asked if we could come up with a simple, low cost, reliable method to measure these flows. Any proposed devices would have to require little maintenance, and would have to fit in the existing small area outflow pits. 102 years earlier, in 1921, Dr. Ralph L. Parshall (1881-1959), one of the most celebrated internationally-known alumni and faculty members in the history of Colorado State University. developed the Parshall Flume at the then-named Colorado Agricultural College's hydrology lab. Dr Parshall can be seen, testing his flume design, in the picture below-thanks to Colorado State University The Parshall flume is an open channel flow-metering device designed to measure the flow of surface water and irrigation flow. It is a fixed hydraulic structure, and is also used to measure volumetric flow rate in industrial discharges, municipal sewer lines, and influent/effluent flows in wastewater treatment plants. Optimos Group adapted Dr Parshall’s design to fit in the wetlands outflow pits, with the widely different design flows able to be accommodated by a common flume size. We used radar level sensors to measure the depth of water in the flumes, thereby allowing the calculation of flow, and all four radar level sensors were connected to a single multi-channel data logger for local data collection. Remote data communication can be added simply, if and when required. The completed units were tested and calibrated in our workshop and then delivered to site, where they were all installed and running with less than a full day of work. Thank you, Ralph Parshall. Brilliant design and construction by Glenn Leishman, thanks to Ravish M Chari for facilitating the rapid delivery of the Endress+Hauser Group Micropilot radar sensors and to Metrocorp Technologies Pty Ltd for the flawless installation onsite.