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Rob Menegotto, Ceo of Mantech.

With growing interest from water utilities, pulp and paper operations, and heavy industry, real-time water quality testing is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity especially in a regulatory climate where every discharge is monitored, recorded, and accountable. The future isn’t just about testing faster. It’s about knowing sooner and acting smarter.

Traditional testing methods for water quality parameters like Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) were designed for labs — not real-time operational decisions. But industrial processes don’t wait for lab results.

That disconnect is what Canadian company MANTECH is working to fix, offering water testing solutions that provide lab-grade results in under ten minutes, using safe, green chemistry that eliminates the need for toxic reagents like dichromate, mercury, or strong acids.

“We’re not trying to reinvent the lab, said Rob Menegotto, CEO of MANTECH. We’re trying to get meaningful data into the hands of plant operators before it’s too late to act on it.”

From Post-Mortem to Real-Time. In most industrial plants, from wastewater treatment facilities to pulp and paper mills pollution control tests can take hours or even days. That delay turns monitoring into a post-mortem. By the time a test flags a problem, the discharge has already happened.

MANTECH’s approach flips that dynamic. A test that used to take 5 days (BOD) or 3 hours (COD) now takes about 10 minutes, on-site. And the implications go far beyond compliance.

One real-world example underscores the point. In Menegotto’s home city in Canada, a sudden storm overwhelmed the wastewater system. Operators, lacking timely COD data, didn’t know the level of organic loading and couldn’t respond in time.

Untreated waste was discharged into a nearby river.

“The storm lasted an hour. That’s all it took, Menegotto said. -By the time they got lab results, the damage was done. They were fined $200,000 for the pollution event, not because they didn’t care, but because they didn’t have the data when they needed it.”

With live testing in place, they could have immediately diverted flow, activated reservoirs, or adjusted treatment inputs. Instead, they were flying blind.

What Real-Time Looks Like. The system can be deployed as a manual station: grab a sample, prepare it in three minutes, run the test. Or fully automated, mounted to the wall and programmed to run at set intervals.

In pulp and paper mills, where chemical usage and discharge are tightly regulated, MANTECH’s PeCOD® Analyzer has already demonstrated value. Menegetto revealed that a mill in Chile used real-time COD data to optimize hypochlorite dosing and reduce organics in effluent, cutting chemical costs while improving environmental compliance. The result? Over $3 million saved in a year with no loss in product quality.

AI in the Pipeline, but with caution. Menegotto says they are also exploring how artificial intelligence can support predictive water quality management, spotting trends before they escalate, identifying anomalies, and automating alerts. But bringing AI into water infrastructure isn’t straightforward.

“The idea is solid, but the implementation hits a wall. Utilities are rightfully wary of connecting water systems to the internet. The risk of hacking is not theoretical.”

Menegetto explained that water infrastructure is increasingly a target for cyberattacks, and many utilities have blanket bans on connecting testing or control equipment to the cloud. MANTECH’s response is a hybrid model: local AI servers installed on site, running offline but periodically updated with encrypted packages.

“It’s about delivering smart analysis without opening the door to external threats. We’re building intelligence into the process but with security built in by default.”

From the Lab to the Plant Floor. MANTECH’s systems are already established in certified labs. But fair presence like in Ecomondo marks a turning point. According to Menegotto, his company is shifting focus from controlled lab environments to live industrial operations where every minute, every reading, and every decision counts.

“We’ve been a lab-focused company, that’s where our roots are. But it’s time to get out of the lab. That’s why we’re here. We want to meet the operators, the engineers, and the people who are running the plants.”

Text and photo: Mia Heiskanen