Water in the digital age

The water industry has undergone enormous changes in the past 20 years. It used to be the norm to have a large team of operations staff to carry out time-consuming tasks such as manual measurements.

But today, W/WW treatment plants can be mostly operated remotely, increasing productivity, efficiency and accuracy. Increasing populations, industrialisation and climate change intensify water scarcity. Communities across the world have an urgent requirement for safe, reliable and affordable W/WW services.

W/WW is a non-cyclical industry: authorities will continue to invest in upgrades if populations increase and infrastructure ages. It is therefore critical to leverage the right solutions at the right time to ensure these investments are effective in improving operations and justifying capital expenditure.

The W/WW industry should be focusing on the internet of things (IoT) and how it can improve operations. The IoT connects digital objects such as sensors and flow meters to the internet, turning them into ‘smart’ assets that can communicate with users and application systems. This allows for more efficient process control and optimised network management. General water monitoring operations that were previously manual and inefficient can now be automated, continuously reporting on their own status in real time.

Endress+Hauser understands the practical and quality needs that the water industry is demanding. That is why its primary goal is to create practical solutions to ensure everything works perfectly.

Netilion Water Network Insights optimises processes across the entire water cycle while collecting measuring variables and displaying the data in a customisable visualisation. This allows a W/WW treatment plant to react quickly to incidents and save on operating and energy costs.

Water’s journey is endless. It often travels long distances through huge pipelines in remote areas without any other infrastructure. To guarantee sufficient water quantity and quality, active management is needed.

This is exactly where the batterypowered Promag W 800 makes your life easier. It provides everything you need to maintain full compliance with legal requirements while increasing your operational efficiency.

Whether in urban or remote areas, a desert or the tropics, the accurate measuring and billing of drinking and process water consumption is becoming increasingly important. Endress+Hauser has developed the new Promag W 800 with battery power precisely for such applications.

This electromagnetic flow meter allows for versatile and autonomous use even at locations without power supply:

• in areas with sea, river, spring or groundwater

• in distribution networks and transfer stations

• in irrigation systems.

Water quality monitoring is also an important aspect for water and wastewater plant managers. Online monitoring in the distribution network ensures that water quality is permanently measured. Real-time warning of pollution events is possible to ensure that they are quickly resolved, and downstream operations are not adversely affected.

Furthermore, online monitoring parameters are used as an input for network asset condition assessment – for example, pH and conductivity in wastewater pump stations. This can allow for improvement to network operations.

Water quality monitoring generally consists of several key parameters: • pH • turbidity • free chlorine. These parameters ensure that drinking water is safe or that treated wastewater meets environmental guidelines. They are either measured online by process instrumentation or manual grab sampling, which may examine a composite sample over a weekly period.

IoT technology solutions like Netilion can provide enormous benefits that were not previously possible. Whether in densely populated or remote regions, Netilion Water Network Insights ensures full transparency in water networks around the clock. It can be used for the reliable monitoring of water quantity, pressure, temperature, level, or water quality.

Netilion Water Network Insights connects all levels of a water supply system and offers service providers and water associations tailor-made solutions from a single source. These include everything from field devices, components for data transfer, data recording and data archiving, to data evaluation as well as one-of-a-kind forecasting functions.

In these testing times of decreasing water security, IoT technology has been proven to boost operational efficiency and provide smart investment decisions. As utilities continue to make quantum leaps in their use of IoT technology,now is not the time to be left behind.

Rely on a partner that offers the best measuring devices and solutions, assists you with technical support on-site, and has in-depth knowledge of the requirements in the W/WW industry. With Endress+Hauser, you get high-quality solutions capable of increasing your plant efficiency and optimising costs.