The water industry faces challenges related to population growth, affordability, quality, and maintenance. Collecting the right data through sensors and IoT devices can help address these challenges by enabling predictive and preventative maintenance as well as better process control. Key indicators that can be monitored include inputs and outputs at different treatment stages, overall plant performance metrics, and readings from sensors that track quality, pressure, temperature, and leaks.
2. “With the population forecast to grow by 20%
over the next twenty years, and issues including
affordability and quality, challenges in the water
industry sector remain as strong as ever. ” Cathryn Ross
Collecting the right data can help overcome these
challenges and save the company a lot.
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3. Maintenance Challenges
Objective
Ensuring the condition and operation of equipment
and facilities which allows recognizing damages and
offering maintenance solution for all facilities including:
Preventive Maintenance: Aims to avoid breakdowns and
stoppages.
Predictive Maintenance: Aims to predict breakdowns
and carry out a rapid repair following a failure.
Corrective Maintenance: Repairs damage or stoppage of
an equipment and return it to normal operation.
Breakdowns and Stoppages
Electrical and mechanical equipment
breakdowns and stoppages lead to
process shutdowns, as a result the
company loses competition points in
addition to repairment costs.
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4. Quality and Cost Challenges
Objective
Treat the wastewater to be as affordable and
efficient as possible.
Better operational control and maintenance of
the water treatment plants using intelligent
process control methods.
Wastewater Treatment
Wastewater, properly treated, is a source
of water for many purposes.
Good wastewater treatment allows the
maximum amount of water to be reused
instead of going to waste.
However there are significant operational
and financial challenges associated with
wastewater treatment.
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5. OUR PROCESS IS EASY
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STEP 3: Decision Making
Coming out with the most
possible solutions relevant
to our required objectives
STEP 1: Data Collection
Collecting the right data
for each challenge
STEP 2: Analysis
Exploring the data by asking
the right questions and doing
analysis
6. Data Collection and IOT
The advancements in IoT in water
industry is helping improvise water
management by using the concept of
smart sensors installed at various points
in the water system that can collect data
and send it back to monitoring systems
over communication channels.
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7. IOT Devices
An IoT enabled smart water sensor can track the quality,
pressure, and temperature of water.
A leak detector controller can be used to detect
a fault such as a leaky pipe.
Smart water sensor can measure the amount of residual
chemicals after treatment. This can be used to calculate the
efficacy of the selected treatment process and ensure that the
released amount of chemicals stay within permissible limits.
8. Available Indicators
Inputs to Primary Settler
Six indicators represent different
inputs to primary settler i.e Biological
Oxygen Demand, Sediments, etc..
They are continuous and important to
predict local performances
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The open source water treatment dataset contains 38 attributes, some of them are
directly going to be used as indicators for the wastewater challenge. Those indicators are:
Inputs to Secondary Settler
Seven indicators represent different inputs
to secondary settler i.e Chemical Oxygen
Demand, Biological Oxygen Demand, etc..
They are continuous and very important to
predict local performances
Outputs of Plant
Seven indicators represent different
Outputs of plant i.e Chemical Oxygen
Demand, Suspended Solids, etc..
They are continuous and important to
predict local and global performances
Global Performances
Four indicators represent plant
performance based on different
inputs to plant i.e Biological Oxygen
Demand, Suspended Solids, etc..
They are continuous and important
to build a predictive model
Local Performances
Five indicators represent plant
performance based on different
inputs to settlers i.e Sediments,
Biological Oxygen Demand, etc..
They are continuous and important
to build a predictive model
Inputs to Plant
Eight indicators represent different
inputs to plant i.e Chemical Oxygen
Demand, Suspended Solids, etc..
They are continuous and important to
predict global performances
9. Other Indicators
A Discrete Variable expresses the
measurements of Leak Detectors.
Indicates whether there’s a leak or
not, 1 if a leak detected and 0
otherwise.
Very Important to help in solving the
maintenance challenge.
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Additional potential data have to be collected to have access to other indicators which are
important for the challenges analytics.
Continuous Variables express the
measurements of temperature and
pressure sensors.
Indicate the the pressure and the
temperature inside pipes, tanks etc..
Important to help in solving the
maintenance challenge.
A Continuous Variable expresses the
measurements of quality sensors.
Indicates the quality of the water
across the whole treatment plant and
over the distribution channels.
Very important to help in solving the
wastewater challenge.
Temperature & Pressure
Indicators
Quality Indicator Leak Indicator