With almost 30,000 total views in 2017, the “Math Solutions” series of tutorial videos from wastewater consultant and trainer Dan Theobald ("Wastewater Dan") has offered plenty of guidance to treatment plant operators. Here are the lessons that drew the most attention.
Affordability and maintainability are two of the greatest challenges small municipalities face when constructing and managing sewer infrastructure. With these challenges in mind, it’s important for small cities to choose wisely when investing in a wastewater system that needs to last for 30-60 years.
In just eight years at DC Water, which provides drinking water, sewage collection, and sewage treatment in Washington, D.C., serving more than 600,000 residents, George Hawkins transformed the utility from insular and guarded to open and innovative.
One of the things that strikes me when I read Water Online is the expansive range of industry imperatives — from contaminant removal and wastewater management to desalination, infrastructure improvement, and drought prevention. And while we can always point to limited resources as an obstacle, a focus on capital constraints almost always ensures that progress won’t be made. But there’s one resource that increases the likelihood of project success across the board in the water sector.
Recently I had the privilege of participating as a judge in the 2017 U.S. Stockholm Junior Water Prize, hosted by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Water Environment Federation (WEF), which brings the best and brightest of our high school men and women, grades 9 to 12, together to compete for the right to represent the U.S. globally at the International Stockholm Junior Water Prize competition later this year.
From data to knowledge to transformation
Move from complexity to simplicity, from asset and process intelligence to operational intelligence with the PI System. Its highly scalable, open data infrastructure empowers enterprises in real time, transforming operational data into actionable knowledge and business transformation.
ABB uses digital solutions to drive outcomes. Engaging customers to demonstrate tangible results that scale.
The new generation of ABB’s total plant automation: DCS and SCADA for the power and water industries.
Reduced operational costs and downtime through seamless distributed control system integration.
Real-time control of a 360km water distribution system through an advanced distributed control system.
Improved water reliability and lifecycle costs through total control of a one hundred mile transfer system.
100% available water in the driest of deserts through highly efficient desalination.
Plant visibility and control with no downtime through a unified control system.
Businesses rely on process units meeting or exceeding their operational plans. To ensure that operational plans are achieved, it is important that equipment operates as designed (i.e., delivers the required performance) and continues to operate in an optimum manner (i.e., remains reliable, in a good condition). The most common causes of missing operational plan targets are equipment failure, which results in unplanned downtime, and low quality or yields from production processes.
The prime reason most industrial plants still have internal, on-site maintenance staffs is to reduce repair times and unplanned downtime, which negatively impact revenue, customer satisfaction, cost, and other key business metrics. In most plants today, contracting with the equipment manufacturer for maintenance usually results in unacceptably long periods of downtime for critical equipment while waiting for a technician to arrive – particularly with the typical two passes required for inspection and repair.
At ARC Advisory Group’s 20th Annual Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida, Shawn Anderson, Senior Research Specialist for Fisher Valves, a division of Emerson Process Management, gave a presentation on how the company is leveraging the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to help end users reduce valve-related unplanned downtime.
Wastewater service charges vary considerably across EPA regions and States. That’s one of the key findings from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies’ (NACWA) Cost of Clean Water Index. If you live in Montana, Wyoming or the Dakotas (EPA Region 8), your average service charge of $261 a year is considerably less than the $884 your fellow Americans up in New England (EPA Region 1) are paying. As you can imagine, much of the difference is to do with population size and geography.
Did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had a published Contingency Plan in anticipation of the current government shutdown? I guess in hindsight, you would have expected it for an agency with 134 facilities dotted across the country. And in fact, it’s required by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Circular A-11, Section 124 that all government agencies have plans for an orderly shutdown “in the event of an absence of appropriations.”
Did you ever have a paper route or go door-to-door selling items to your neighbors for a charitable cause in your younger years? Remember the house with the big dog? Or the overgrown yard? Maybe even the dark house at the end of the lane that the spooky old woman known to all as “the witch” lived in?
Most people understand the inherent benefits of plastic piping — chemical resistance, installation speed, ease of assembly, cost efficiency, longevity in corrosive, harsh exterior or underground environments, etc. Not everyone, however, fully appreciates the nuances of plastic piping design that help to maximize those benefits most efficiently.
Outsourcing water management at industrial plants is not a simple all-or-nothing decision. Instead, when looking to outsource, industrial plant managers have a variety of models to choose from to meet their needs, each with its own benefits as well as trade-offs. Here is what to consider when deciding what and how to outsource.
DC Water is embracing a new set of six core values and will immediately move towards reshaping itself to operate more streamlined and businesslike under a strategic plan and realignment announced by Chief Executive Officer David L. Gadis.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) Board of Commissioners has elected new leadership officers among its nine-member governing body.
In a tragedy that highlights the inherent danger faced by wastewater treatment professionals on a regular basis, a worker employed by Baltimore’s Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant recently suffered a fatal accident while in a construction trench.
CDM Smith is excited to be the first in our industry to launch a career re-entry program in partnership with iRelaunch and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
Itron, Inc., which is innovating the way utilities and cities manage energy and water, and Disco Learning Media announced recently an educational collaboration to host Resourcefulness, a new interactive experience inside PBS LearningMedia that offers free, educational standards-aligned videos, interactives and lesson plans for high school students.
Over 100 delegates attended British Water’s inaugural Women in Water event held in London on 27 November 2018.
