IoT Solution for Water Treatment By UL Group

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The need of fresh and clean water is growing exponentially day by day. The water prone diseases are reaching to new levels and most importantly, the availability of drinking water is some of the prominent challenges the industry is facing today.

As we know that two-thirds of earth’s surface is water, out of which clean drinking water is still a limited resource. We rely mostly on rivers, and rain for our drinking water needs. On the other hand, due to increase in population growth the demand of the potable water is very high. Thus, to balance the availability and demand ration we have no other alternative left then the purification of the water.

The water from various sources such as rivers, lakes and oceans must be purified to remove its hardness and other impurities so that the water finally can be made potable. The purification process of the water is to be IoT-enabled, with the help of water sensors can track the quality, potability, pressure, and temperature of water. A robust IoT, platform- and analytics-driven solution empowers wastewater managers to measure and improve treatment across facilities. With new technologies and comprehensive service, UL group provides end to end solutions for a future-ready water industry.

Challenges

The need of fresh and clean water is growing exponentially day by day. The water prone diseases are reaching to new levels and most importantly, the availability of drinking water is some of the prominent challenges the industry is facing today.

a) Water Leakages

A water treatment plant can be considered a vast network of the water and chemicals pipes. A leakage in any of the pipes leads to a significant loss of resource and money. On top of it, the time consumed on the repairing the leak is a plus to workload of the employees.

b) Chemical Monitoring

In order to provide safe drinking water to the people, water treatment plants must process the water through many stages. Chemical Induction is one of the processes in which a batch of water undergoes during its treatment. Now the challenge is what amount of chemical would be the best fit for the batch depending upon the source of the water. Water treatment plants are falling short of the methods that can help them to monitor and manage the amount of chemical that is added in batch.

c) Maintenance

Maintenance of the water treatment plant is itself a whole different challenge altogether. The supply line in the treatment plants requires regular monitoring and timely maintenance. In case of any disruption, the maintenance team must shut down the entire plant to locate, identify and solve the issue.

IoT Advantages

IoT offers sensors-based monitoring of water, the sensor acts as a data generation source and the data so generated is further monitored and analysed in real time and the desired actionable insights can be generated. These insights play a vital role by providing the various information such as flow rate, pH level, leakages, hardness of water etc. to the plant managers and supervisors so that the corrective actions can be taken to maintain the quality, sanity and purity of water that needed to be delivered. Also, the data so collected from the various sensors and leak detectors can help to manage the plants effectively and enables users to be notified about issues in real-time.

Other benefits

  • Remote Monitoring and Diagnosis
  • Custom apps as per the need of business
  • Leak and Trace Chemical Detection
  • Wastewater Management Can Flag Dangerous Bacteria
  • Perform complex calculations easily
  • Collect data from multiple points
  • Water flow meters to track consumption
  • Allows reactive and predictive maintenance for the treatment plant
  • Generate actionable insights

Proposed Solution

The water treatment solution can help to measure and track the flow, quality and leakages of the water. The water treatment solution stands on three building blocks namely;

  • Sensors
  • Gateway – Revolutionary PI
  • IoT platform

Sensors

Sensors enable users to measure water flow, energy consumed, pH, salinity, chlorine, and temperature. Sending data and alerts continuously to an IoT platform allows the users to move from preventative to predictive maintenance. The data gathered from the several sources will be stored in the cloud and monitored on a continuous basis.

Gateway – RevPI

The communication system plays a crucial role in sending and receiving the data from sensors to cloud.

The RevPI (Revolutionary PI) one end connects with the sensors and other end get connected with the cloud, thus it acts as a data collection, connection and communication source.

The RevPI facilitates to custom programming and edge computing so that the overall improvement in performance and real time control is possible.

IoT Platform

Devices like smartphones and tablets can be incorporated with apps that connect to the cloud and can access IoT enabled sensors in real-time. This enables the key decision makers to make better and quick decisions based on the information obtained.

UL supports the end customer to select the optimum IoT platform as per the present and future needs.

Thus, the end customer can choose the best available IoT platform by analyzing the pros and cons of each platform.

System Diagram

The Rev-PI collects various data including sludge density, amount of chemicals, pressure, and flow rates from various sensors and sends the data to the cloud server.

The system allows users to know the status and extent of attrition of devices and equipment without visiting the installation sites. The collected data can be used to know the timing for maintenance or to create an optimum operation plan.

Conclusion

The IoT driven water treatment solution fosters the treatment plants in becoming more productive and hence more profitable organizations. IoT has an overwhelming impact on how water treatment plants take advantage of connected devices empowered workforce to be more informed and collaborative. Businesses are relying on connected devices and big data analytics which optimize processes and hence entrepreneurs end up making well-informed decisions for better operational strategies.

Article by
Rahul Chandrayan
Business Development
Manager – IIoT
UL GROUP OF COMPANIES
Web: www.ulepl.com

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