Emerson's Automation, Analytical And Optimization Solutions Help Municipalities Safeguard Public Trust

Pittsburgh, PA — The water and wastewater industries are charged with protecting public health and safety in the face of extreme weather events and security concerns, complying with increasingly complex environmental regulations, and being good financial stewards of public dollars. Being able to efficiently and expertly manage water and wastewater treatment processes and systems plays an important role in enabling municipalities to effectively address these challenges, and thereby best serve their communities.

Emerson Process Management offers a broad portfolio of integrated instrumentation and control solutions to help municipalities navigate today's complex water environment. Emerson's PlantWeb® digital plant architecture leverages the Ovation® expert control system, AMS™ Suite of predictive maintenance software applications, intelligent field devices and asset optimization solutions that reduce machinery operating costs and maximize the life of pumps, motors and other rotating equipment.

Harnessing the power of Emerson's integrated PlantWeb technologies gives municipalities the ability to integrate advanced control, optimization and predictive maintenance functions, and therefore avoid the substantial disadvantages of relying on disparate islands of automation. These disadvantages include incompatibility among systems, difficulty in maintaining aging systems due to the scarcity and/or expense of spare parts, and the inability to expand systems to meet the needs of growing population.

"Utilizing Emerson's PlantWeb digital plant architecture with the Ovation control system makes it possible to operate plants more efficiently, reduce risk and costs, and take advantage of advanced control technology that facilitates the sharing of information throughout the organization," said Bob Yeager, president of Emerson Process Management's Power & Water Solutions industry center. "Some of the largest cities in the country – including Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Detroit, San Diego and Sacramento – as well as smaller municipalities, trust Emerson technologies to help ensure cleaner, safer water supplies, reduce environmental hazards, and realize significant operational cost savings."

According to Yeager, the issue of public trust broadly falls into three separate but related areas – Public Health & Safety, Public Investment and Environmental Compliance. "Only Emerson offers the breadth and depth of water/wastewater automation and analytical solutions that address all three critical areas," he said.

Protecting Public Health & Safety
Emerson solutions help municipalities protect the water supply from threats posed by human nature … and Mother Nature. The Ovation system's embedded security features enable customers to proactively address cyber security issues, such as system hacking, and data integrity and verification. Emerson also helps customers address security concerns through special services, such as security patch monitoring and system security assessments.

In addition to cyber security, the Ovation system can also play an important role in augmenting a municipality's existing physical security efforts. Video security monitoring, for example, can be integrated into the Ovation system to guard against potential sabotage at the plant and remote locations, such as pumping stations.

At the device level, Emerson offers on-line analysis systems, instruments, and sensors that help plants safeguard the water infrastructure. The company's intelligent field devices like Fisher® digital valves, Rosemount® transmitters, Micro Motion® Coriolis flow and density meters, and Rosemount Analytical devices provide continuous real-time health information to power AMS Suite predictive maintenance applications. CSI Machinery Health™ Management solutions help users reduce machinery operating costs and maximize the life of pumps, motors and other rotating equipment.

Emerson's Rosemount Analytical Water Quality System, for example, is an online, multiparameter system that continuously measures several critical water quality variables – such as pH and ORP, conductivity, temperature, free chlorine and monochloramine, oxygen and turbidity – at strategic points in the treatment and distribution system. A change in these parameters can signal to the plant operator that a contaminant event has occurred so appropriate action can be taken. This solution provides constant measurement of water quality, and detects deviations in expected values, a critical step toward ensuring safety and quality of water treatment and distribution systems.

"This kind of monitoring makes up a crucial early warning system that enables plant personnel to quickly take action that safeguards the well being of the public and the environment," said Yeager.

Mother Nature also wreaks havoc on water and wastewater systems. Combined Sewer Systems, for example, can overflow untreated sewage into waterways during heavy rains, posing health, environmental, and regulatory consequences. Integrating weather monitoring capabilities into the Ovation system enables municipalities to take proactive steps to minimize the impact of impending wet weather events. Ovation system alarms notify operators of approaching rain, enabling them to initiate wet weather containment measures, such as inflatable dams, basins or tunnels, to temporarily divert/hold excess water and eliminate or minimize undesirable overflows.

Protecting Public Investment
Public utilities and municipalities are held accountable for the judicious use of public funds. GASB No. 34 (Government Accounting Standards Board Statement No. 34, "Basic Financial Statements – and Management's Discussion and Analysis – for State and Local Governments) illustrates the increasing accountability municipalities face. This financial regulation requires governments to define the value of all assets and report depreciation and other expenses. As many municipalities invest public funds to automate their treatment facilities, water distribution systems and wastewater collection systems, management of those automation assets becomes an important element of compliance to this regulation. This is compounded by the increasing pressure to do more with less. PlantWeb's network of predictive intelligence makes it possible to detect process and equipment problems even before they occur. By arming maintenance personnel with such equipment information as instrument health, valve cycle totalization, oxidation, chemical monitoring and control, and the health of expensive capital machinery such as large pumps and motors, municipalities are equipped to move from reactive to proactive management.

"Access to this information keeps plant assets well managed so crews can focus only on equipment that really needs attention," said Yeager. "This valuable insight translates into bottom-line savings, including reduced maintenance costs."

Emerson's SmartProcess® plant optimization software offers additional opportunities for cost savings and operational efficiencies. SmartProcess modules incorporate fuzzy logic, neural networks and model-based predictive controls, as well as other tools developed to meet the needs of the water and wastewater industries. The SmartProcess Economic Optimizer optimizes water treatment and wastewater treatment processes to minimize costs, reduce equipment wear and tear, and balance tradeoffs, such as low and high flow. This solution can be applied to many key areas of operation within the plant and throughout the water system, including chemical usage (modeling chemical usage for acids and bases for process utilization to adjust the pH ensures the most efficient – and therefore cost effective – use of chemicals) and pump optimization (optimizing the timing and location of pump usage reduces equipment wear and tear, and minimizes electricity costs).

Additionally, the SmartProcess Global Performance Advisor monitors and benchmarks equipment performance against design specifications. This package provides operators of water and wastewater facilities with the ability to quickly identify, then address, problematic areas, which then translates into improved equipment performance and reduced operating costs.

Maintaining Environmental/Regulatory Compliance
Today, water and wastewater industries are facing a growing number of complex regulations. In addition to financial reporting requirements, such as GASB No. 34, there are increasingly complex environmental regulations that must be addressed. The EPA's Office of Wastewater Management has added numerous programs and policies to promote compliance with the Clean Water Act – all of which have implications for environmental reporting. In addition, Title IV of the Bioterrorism Act (Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act) of 2002 will have an impact for years to come. This act stipulates that each community water system conduct a vulnerability assessment of its system to a terrorist attack or other intentional act that disrupts the supply of drinking water, and prepare/revise and maintain an emergency response plan.

While diverse, these financial and environmental regulations have one thing in common: they all call for access to operational data to fulfill the reporting requirements. In organizations where financial and operational information resides on separate – and often incompatible – systems, it is difficult and time consuming to obtain the necessary combination of information required for reporting. Emerson's Ovation system seamlessly integrates information not only at the plant level but also on a district-wide basis, streamlining the reporting process for additional, measurable benefits.

SOURCE: Emerson Process Management