Water Industry

Suppliers of drinking water and those processing wastewater are facing ever-tougher prospects in the years ahead. 

At the most basic level, the processing of water requires energy, to pump, filter, aerate, distribute or discharge.  Meeting the regulations in the Water Framework Directive could necessitate increase energy use and plant capital expenditure.

Tighter discharge constraints coupled with population expansion and a changing climate exert added pressure on existing processing plant. 

Improved Asset Management with Advanced Process Control

Advanced Process Control has been implemented in a broad range of manufacturing industries for over  twenty years, to continually drive the process towards optimum operation.  Perceptive Engineering have successfully transferred that expertise and those benefits to the water industry.

Modelling your process from plant metrics enables us to identify every opportunity to reduce energy, or increase throughput, or improve compliance, by identifying, managing and reducing the variability in the process.

We determine the theoretical capability of each plant, then identify the measures needed to achieve and maintain that capability.   Asset efficiency is increased, asset performance is optimised. 

More efficient operation results in lower energy requirements and can significantly extend asset life; capital expansion of the plant can be deferred even with a growing user population.

Data Rich, Information Poor – How to Turn Monitoring into Managing

The water industry is becoming more automated and reliant on data from remote   sensors.  Effective management and operation of water assets does not rely on the amount of data generated, but rather on the quality, reliability and interpretation of that data.  Operators and managers need     tools to turn process metrics into process knowledge, to help support decisions critical to the operation.

Perceptive Engineering has pioneered software to test and validate the integrity of process data.  This software has long been utilised in food processing, steel making and the pharmaceutical sector.  It has been developed to form part of a decision support system for the water industry.

WaterMV provides plant-wide asset management in real-time, by validating all critical data reaching the control room and highlighting signal abnormalities or process faults.  Plant operation becomes more reliable and robust; assets can be run closer to their design constraints; capacity can be increased without capital expansion.  

Perceptive Engineering is working in partnership with the largest water utility companies in the UK and Netherlands, to deliver improved asset utilisation in potable and waste water treatment.