Smart grid of municipal mini-plants for wastewater treatment. Controlled and monitored from a single center. Remote interventions. Traceability. Transparency.
Capacity to remotely monitor and control systems for waste-water treatment and to provide real time and trustworthy data of system’s behavior to various stakeholders is of high relevance. SCADA systems are used to undertake this job. SCADA solutions are usually conceptualized and designed with a major focus on technological integrability and functionality. Very little contributions are brought to optimize these systems with respect to a mix of target functions, especially considering a lifecycle perspective. In this project we propose a solution for optimizing SCADA systems from a lifecycle perspective for the specific case of waste-water treatment units. Tests we have run on the proposed cloud-based SCADA system indicated a proper behavior. Non-critical time lags were observed after the HMI applications were put into operation, on both local and cloud HMI. In addition, we conclude that ensuring a high-speed internet connection and running the cloud application on a local cloud or on the company cloud computing platform would deliver better time response. This option depends on several variables, such as the existence of the local cloud, as well as the criticality of time lags from the perspective of the WWT installation’s operator. We investigated here disruptive technologies, which are at their primary stages of evolution on the S-curve. Thus, we recommend this SCADA architecture for non-critical WWT installations, not for the premium ones.
Resources needed
60000 €; 5 experts involved. IoT, automation, cloud computing.
Evidence of success
This practice was tested on several WWT plants in pilot projects. In this respect, a strong collaboration with a company that installs SCADA systems for WWT plants in rural areas and small towns has been established.
Difficulties encountered
We recommend not using yet this type of technologies on critical WWT processes (e.g., chemicals dosing) before testing them into non-critical areas, including other industrial processes than WWT.
Potential for learning or transfer
The development of smart networks of WWT is important for environmental protection, for increasing the resilience of the plants to various incidents, including natural disasters, as well as for ensuring provision of big data for analysis to third parties in an easy way.
Tags: Automation, ICT, Wastewater, Water management, Water technology
