Cali Treatment Plant Tries On AI
By Sara Jerome,
@sarmje
A wastewater treatment plant in Wasco, CA, is making use of artificial intelligence in water treatment.
“For the first time in California, water treatment is leveraging artificial intelligence, a game changing alternative that may spread to oil fields across the country, and it's starting in Kern County,” Bakersfield Now reported.
Kern County is known for oil production, which is highly water intensive. One hundred gallons of wastewater are created in the process of producing a single barrel of oil, the report said.
A wastewater treatment plant in Wasco is using new technology to treat oil-polluted wastewater. It uses technology from the company MembranePRO Services, making it the first plant in California to do so, Bakersfield Now reported.
The wastewater treatment plant “expects to begin recycling 210,000 gallons of produced water per day by July, and process perhaps twice that volume by the end of this year,” Bakersfield.com reported.
Arian Edalat, president of MembranePRO Services, said the “secret sauce” in the process is the new technology installed at the treatment plant.
“It's the human machine interface, a device using AI algorithms and breakthrough membrane technology to take gallons of water, analyze how polluted it is, and determine the most effective treatment method,” Bakersfield Now reported.
"It's like a doctor diagnosing the problem and taking medication into effect," Edalat said, per the report.
The plant recycles wastewater to nearby industrial companies. Eventually, the recycled wastewater could be used to water farms.
The wastewater industry arguably lags on tech adoption. But various wastewater pros are working to bring robotics and artificial intelligence to this sector.
Tom Ferguson, Imagine H2O’s vice president of programming, spoke to Water Deeply about technology trends in the wastewater industry, including potential solutions in robotics and artificial intelligence.
“There have been various companies that have looked at this and said, ‘How do we make life easier for a data-constrained water operator?’” he said.
Imagine H2O is a nonprofit based in San Francisco that helps water entrepreneurs find investors, Water Deeply reported. The company hosts a competition to find the most promising projects. In January, it sifted through a group of 206 applicants to find 13 that it will support with its resources. Winners take home grants.
“All of these innovations allow utilities to optimize. If you are saving money on energy or on chemicals or treatment, or if you can cut a six-step process down to two, all of those savings fall directly to the bottom line. That means there is more and more breathing space on the utilities balance sheet, reducing the likelihood of rate increases in the future,” Ferguson said.