Changes Magazine

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The skies are clear but for the occasional puff of cloud, and the outdoor water slide at the Vestbadet aquatic center in the Danish town of Viborg sparkles blue in the sunshine. On this perfect summer’s day, three children are racing each other down the slide’s triple lanes, reveling in the 25°C warmth of the pristine water. If it were up to him, Kenneth Laursen would be cooling off in the pool, too. A dip would be just the thing – provided, of course, that the water is the right temperature, has a pH of between 7.0 and 7.6 and contains at least 1 mg of free available chlorine per liter. A CLEAN POOL IS A SAFE POOL Kenneth Laursen knows all about swimming pool water. His company, Cabola ApS, supplies close to 300 sites all over Denmark with the chemicals they need to provide clean swimming conditions for several hundred bathers at a time: primarily sodium hypochlorite solution and sulfuric acid, along with hydrochloric acid and cleaning agents. In water, sodium hypochlorite dissociates into hydroxide ions and free available chlorine. The latter not only inhibits algal growth but also oxidizes the dead skin cells, sweat and sunscreen washed from swimmers’ bodies – a chemical reaction that produces chloramines, the compounds that give swimming pools their characteristic ‘chlorine’ odor. How frequently these chemicals need replenishing depends on multiple variables: temperature, the level of solar radiation and the number of people in the pool. Kenneth Laursen: “It also makes a big difference to chlorine consumption whether swimmers shower before entering the water.” That means the daily amount of sodium hypochlorite added may vary between 10 and 20 ml per cubic meter of pool water. As a result, Cabola’s customer resupply intervals are rather variable, which can lead to logistical inefficiencies. “Whenever the Vestbadet pool used to order from us, we’d phone around our other customers in the Viborg area to see

Total transparency For supply chains, transparency is key, and it starts with effective inventory management. Here, digitalization is driving solutions for a wealth of new applications – such as level monitoring in mobile, decentralized storage tanks and silos. The customer benefits range from efficiency gains to completely new business models.

1 Clean swimming pool water is a question of the right chemistry. 2 For Kenneth Laursen, providing customers with top-notch service is a key benefit that comes from deploying Micropilot FWR30. 3 Color indicators show whether the water has the optimal pH and sufficient free available chlorine.

Text: Marlene Etschmann Photography: Matthias Haslauer, Christoph Fein

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