What Plant Match is. A full jar test designed around your actual plant. Instead of using fixed bench settings, the tool works out paddle speeds, mixing times and settle times that reproduce your plant's conditions in a 1 L jar — so what works on the bench should work on the plant.
How it differs from Quick Test. Quick Test is one page with a fixed protocol — good for a fast "which dose is best" comparison, clarification only. Plant Match adds the things Quick Test leaves out: mixing matched to your plant, filtration simulation, pH adjustment with acid/base estimation, custom stock strengths, full reporting, and the optional floc strength test. Use Quick Test for routine dose checks; use Plant Match when you want the jar to genuinely represent your plant, or when your test involves filtration or pH work.
How to navigate. The tabs across the top run in order — work left to right, or use the Next button at the bottom of each tab:
Each tab has its own Quick guide (collapsed, like this one) if you want more detail. + Floc Strength is an optional extra test, outside the main sequence.
This tab is where you describe the plant — flow rates, tank sizes, paddle speeds, hydraulic loading rates. You just enter what's on the plant's design drawings or what the SCADA tells you it's running at. The tool does the conversion.
Behind the scenes, the tool works out the mixing intensity at each stage — how vigorously the water is being stirred. It then figures out what jar paddle speed gives the same intensity in a 1 L jar. That's what makes the bench test a meaningful copy of the plant.
It does the same thing for the rest of the plant: the clarifier rise rate, the filter rate. All of these get translated into bench-scale settings on the next tabs.
If you don't have plant data — or you're just exploring — you can switch to Generic mode below and set the jar mixing intensity directly using typical values for a conventional plant.
Clarifier type doesn't matter for the jar test. What matters is the rise rate — the m/h that floc has to settle faster than to be removed. Set it from your plant's design or operating data.
For a meaningful filter step in the jar test, the tool needs the plant filter rate (to scale the analogy) and the media type (to pick a Whatman / membrane that mimics the bed cut-off). The jar test won't reproduce filter runtime — but it will give you a clean filtrate sample for analysis comparable to your downstream water.
This tab tells you what to dial into your jar tester. The tool has already worked everything out from the Plant Match tab — the green panels are the numbers you set on the bench: paddle speed (rpm) and how long to run each stage.
The white fields (target G, stage times) are already filled in from your plant data. You only need to touch them if you deliberately want to test different mixing — most people never do.
If a green panel turns amber, the required speed is outside what a jar tester can do (over ~250 rpm or under ~10). That usually means the paddle dimensions in Setup don't match your actual bench paddle.
This tab gives you the recipe for each stock solution you'll dose from. There are four of them:
The tool tells you exactly what to weigh out (or measure with a pipette) and what volume to make up to. Make coagulant and polymer stocks fresh each day — they age and lose strength.
The simple rule: 1 mL of a 1 g/L stock added to a 1 L jar gives 1 mg/L dose. Everything else scales from there.
This is where you decide what each jar gets. The auto-fill buttons populate a sensible ladder based on what test you're running — vary one thing at a time so the results are interpretable.
Typical sequence:
About acid and base doses: The tool can estimate how much acid (or base) you need to reach a target pH, using the raw water alkalinity from the Results tab. Click Estimate acid/base to populate the columns. The estimate accounts for the alkalinity that the coagulant itself consumes, but it's a starting point — not a precise prediction. Always measure the actual pH of the first jar and adjust your dosing accordingly. If you don't enter raw alkalinity, the columns stay empty and you'll need to set the volumes manually based on a pre-titration.
During the flocculation phase, watch each jar and note the floc size class at each timepoint. The size chart below is your reference card — match what you see in the jar to a class number.
Two things that make the observations reliable:
Floc behaviour tracks faster than any analytical result, and weak or slow-forming floc is usually the first sign that the chemistry isn't right.
Edit midpoints in Settings if your bench reference differs. The chart on the right is rendered at on-screen scale — print the true-scale comparator from the Floc Strength tab when you need a bench card.
This is where the analytical numbers go. There are two samples to measure from each jar:
The tool shows whichever columns make sense for your plant — both if you're doing clarification + filtration, just one if you're doing clarification only or direct filtration.
What to measure:
When picking the optimum jar, don't just go for the lowest number. Check that the dose one step lower is nearly as good (it's cheaper), and that the floc looked robust in your observations. A flat plateau is more reliable than a knife-edge.
Four ways to get your work off the tool:
In the browser print dialog: set Destination to Save as PDF, and untick Headers and footers for a clean output.
Exports the tables from your selected sections above (dose ladder, observations, results, floc strength) with test details at the top. Sections without tabular data appear in the PDF only.
This is a follow-on test that answers a question the standard jar test can't: how robust is the floc? You make the floc, take a size reading, then shear it hard for a short burst, take another reading, let it reform, and take a third reading.
Two chemistries can give the same clarified turbidity but behave very differently downstream. Weak floc shears in the filter inlet and packs tightly at the surface, giving fast headloss rise and short filter runs. Floc that can't reform after a shock will punch through the bed and cause early turbidity breakthrough. Strong, reformable floc rides through flow swings and dose drift without complaint.
The tool gives you two numbers:
Run this to compare two coag/polymer combinations that look equivalent on clarified turbidity, to verify a polymer actually toughens the floc, or to diagnose filter breakthrough.
PACl 10% Al₂O₃ medium basicity and Alum 14H₂O equivalent are flagged as Common in NZ.
Default SG and % w/v active for each liquid product. Override if your supplier's COA differs. Changes apply globally to new and existing tests.
Phipps & Bird standard: 25 × 75 mm. Per-test paddle dimensions live in Setup.
Used in Observations and Floc Strength. Edit the midpoints if your bench reference card uses different sizes.
A practical inventory of the gear you need to actually run a jar test. Brand examples are illustrative — equivalents are fine.
It helps you design, run, and report jar tests. There are two ways to use it:
Switch between modes with the selector at the top of the first tab — nothing you've entered is lost when you switch.
Every mixing process — your plant's rapid mix, your plant's floc tanks, or a jar on the bench — can be described by a single number: the mixing intensity. In Plant Match mode the tool works out what that intensity is at each stage of your plant, then figures out what jar paddle speed gives the same intensity in a 1 L jar. It does the same translation for the clarifier (matching rise rate to settle time) and the filter (matching filter rate and media). In Quick Test mode the bench settings are fixed instead — simpler, and fine for comparing jars against each other.
v2.6.