Our system is made by Millipore Corporation ( 1-800-645-5476). As of April, 1999, the Aplication Specialist for our area is Peter Lucas (ext. 6679) (fax: (610) 367-5350). The Application Specialist who sold us our sytem is Keith Goggin (ext. 6928) and the Senior Field Service Engineer who installed it is Marc Coleman (direct ext. 6216, for repairs dept; ext. 8198). Marc used to handle the service contract on our older system.
The system itself consists of two parts: the RiOs5 Reverse Osmosis unit and the Gradient MilliQ unit. In addition, there is a resevoir that stores the water processed by the RiOs5 unit. The two units are intended to work together. The RiOs5 unit handles the initial purification of the water and the MilliQ unit polishes the water to reagent grade purity. Since the RiOs5 unit works slowly (the "5" means 5 l/hr), we use the 30-liter resevoir to store its output so that the MilliQ unit can produce water on demand.
In practice, the deionized water supply here in the IAST building is good enough that we do not need the RiOs5 unit. We run the MilliQ unit directly from the deionized water line and keep the RiOs5 unit as a backup. There is a valve system installed that lets us choose the source of water for the MilliQ system. At its center is a gray t-junction whose inlets are labelled MQ, HOUSE and RO. The MQ end leads to the MilliQ unit. The HOUSE end leads to the deionized water line. The valve along this line is usually kept open (with the valve handle inline with the tubing) and the MilliQ unit processes the IAST deionized water. The RO end of the t leads to the resevoir, so the valve on this line (labelled TANK) is usually kept closed (with the valve handle turned perpendicular to the tubing). If the IAST deionized water supply should fail or be shut down, we would close the HOUSE valve and open the TANK valve so the MilliQ would take the output of the RiOs5 unit as its input (The RiOs5 unit would also have to be taken off of standby mode and put into operation mode).