The ability to detect contaminated feedwater or steam before it can corrode the internals of a turbine or HRSG and cause a forced outage is worth millions. One knock against cation conductivity monitoring - still the most common technique for the early detection of contamination - is the difficulty of interpreting conductivity readings when the plant's makeup contains significant levels of organics or CO2. Here are the pros and cons of cation conductivity monitoriting and some alternative monitoring methods.