Ammonia removal is a key metric for assessing wastewater treatment facility performance. This is because ammonia contributes to aquatic life toxicity. Furthermore, nitrogen, along with phosphorus, is a driver of receiving water eutrophication. Eutrophication, which simply is an over-enrichment of nutrients, can be detrimental to environmental and public health. It can result in harmful algae blooms, dissolved oxygen depletion, fish kills, and other damaging impacts.
Water utilities with highly successful monitoring programs tend to share a common trait: they have a well-defined plan for calibration that emphasizes frequency and tracking. However, when done properly, this process is time-consuming and often leads to unnecessary labor and downtime. The good news is that advanced metering technology is available for plants to get a better handle on the instrument’s performance with significantly less effort.
When water and wastewater plant operators can’t get accurate flow measurements or analytical readings — or lack confidence in their instruments’ readings — it creates challenges with the process. When substandard water goes to homes and causes a boil order, or discharge pollutes a lake or reservoir, the resulting bad press, fines, and potential lawsuits erode public confidence. Avoiding these kinds of problems is rooted in good preventive maintenance habits.
Water and wastewater utility operators work diligently to operate within strict guidelines, ensuring their facilities are producing the best drinking water and highest quality effluent possible. Despite all their efforts, however, it can be easy to fall outside of regulatory compliance without even being aware. The key to avoiding problems like these is to understand how silent noncompliance can happen and knowing when to raise a red flag.
As digitalization continues to grow in the water and wastewater industry, cybersecurity becomes an increasingly important responsibility.
The first SWAN Digital Twin Workshop brought together key voices from around the world representing water utilities, academia, and technology vendors to help build consensus on the foundational definitions and guiding values needed to underpin digital twin concepts and architectural framework.
Water scarcity. Aging infrastructure. Uncertainty due to climate change. Experts from across the water sector agree that water challenges are intensifying, and that action and public awareness is a necessity. Now we have the need — and the opportunity — for those same voices to raise the volume on one of the most powerful ways to address increasing water threats: digital innovation.
Digital transformation of the water sector is continuing to grow in 2019. Climate change, urban population growth, tightening regulations, aging infrastructure, and water scarcity are some of the many global challenges water utilities will be forced to address in creative and cost-effective ways. To meet these needs, utilities are deploying an array of technologies that significantly alter operations and customer engagement.
When it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT), especially in the sometimes conservative water industry, there may be considerable hand-wringing over incorporating IoT into your pump process. Some of the most oft-asked questions — from implementation trends through start-up and ownership — are assembled and answered here.
Did you know that the earliest recorded flood is that of the Great Flood detailed in Christian Bibles, the Torah, and the Quran? I was, therefore, amused to hear from a channel partner about a flow monitoring job in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey, at the foot of Mount Ararat. Why? Because Mount Ararat is cited as the place where Noah’s Ark came to rest after the Great Flood (Genesis 8:4).
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