Process Technician

Key Responsibilities

• Monitor and optimise ion exchange, adsorption, activated carbon, and demineralisation processes.
• Analyse plant performance data and drive corrective actions to prevent downtime and quality deviations.
• Manage resin and activated carbon life cycles, regeneration processes, and change-outs.
• Lead troubleshooting and root cause analysis of process upsets and equipment failures.
• Ensure compliance with food safety, environmental, quality, and statutory requirements.
• Support operator training, SOP development, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Drive operational excellence through proactive process monitoring and performance optimisation.

Business Process – Plant Performance Ion exchange units Review IX performance daily – trend throughput, conductivity/ash, pH, colour and pressure drop; identify problems and act.

Analyse and trend sweeten-on, sweeten-off and rinses; maintain a performance database for problem solving.

Optimise regeneration cycles (chemical strength, dosing, flows, contact time, rinse endpoints) and verify regeneration efficacy after every cycle.

Manage resin loss and vessel top-ups.

Resin life management Maintain a resin life register per vessel: install date, volume treated, capacity trend, top-ups and analysis results.

Coordinate external resin analysis and run lab-scale activity tests; recommend change-out based on data.

Plan and manage resin change-outs (lead times, contractors, shutdown window) and inspect lining and internals at every change-out.

Adsorption columns DE3 & DE4 Monitor outlet colour and cumulative load on each column; track the exhaustion profile against capacity.

Schedule column changeover or regeneration ahead of exhaustion so colour breakthrough never occurs.

Set early-warning trigger limits with a clear operator response, and verify adherence every shift.

Granular activated carbon (GAC) plant Monitor reactivation conditions (furnace temperature, residence time, steam/atmosphere) and carbon feed rate.

Measure reactivation efficacy – reactivated carbon activity (e.g. iodine number / decolourisation), apparent density and ash – against virgin carbon benchmarks.

Track carbon losses per cycle, manage make-up carbon additions and keep carbon inventory sufficient for uninterrupted operation.

Demineralisation plant Ensure demin water quality (conductivity, silica, pH) and volume meet demand.

Manage cation/anion regeneration cycles, efficacy and resin condition.

Instrumentation, downtime & troubleshooting Ensure calibration of conductivity, pH, colour, flow and level instruments across all purification plants.

Record and analyse downtime; lead root cause analysis (5-Why, fishbone) and close out corrective actions.

Lead troubleshooting on plant upsets.