WMS - Water Management System

Water - an essential ingredient in most of the manufacturing processes. In addition to the machines, the employees, and the factory, one of the key players in a manufacturing facility is water. Most of the Batch based as well as Continuous manufacturing processes need water as an important raw material. Many diverse manufacturing operations use water for cleaning and rinsing products, parts and vessels, transporting parts or ingredients, as a lubricant, as a solvent in a chemical reaction or for pollution control. If the product itself is a water-based product (i.e. beverage manufacturing), there is even more water used in the process. The industries that produce metals, wood and paper products, chemicals, gasoline, and oil tend to use more water during the production process. Especially for food products, water can be one of the most valuable ingredients in the whole process. There are many such uses of water in industry.

Its required variants can be hot water, cooled water, chilled water etc. Raw water entering an industrial plant often needs treatment to meet tight quality specifications. In most cases, the used water also needs treatment to render it fit for re-use or disposal. Water treatment is used to optimize most water-based industrial processes, such as heating, cooling, processing, cleaning, and rinsing so that operating costs and risks are reduced. Poor water treatment lets water interact with the surfaces of pipes and vessels which contain it. Water treatment is also used to improve the quality of water contacting the manufactured product e.g. semiconductors, and/or can be part of the product e.g. beverages, pharmaceuticals, etc. In these instances, poor water treatment can cause defective products.

Industrial water treatment encompasses aspects which include industrial wastewater treatment, boiler water treatment and cooling water treatment. 

Cooling towers provide cooled water. A cooling tower is a heat rejection device which allows water and air to come in contact with each other. It acts as a heat exchanger which extracts waste heat to the atmosphere though the cooling of a water stream to a lower temperature. The primary use of large, industrial cooling towers is to remove the heat absorbed in the circulating cooling water systems used in power plants, petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, natural gas processing plants, food processing plants, semi-conductor plants, and for other industrial facilities such as in condensers of distillation columns, for cooling liquid in crystallization, etc.

Maintenance of such cooling towers is inevitable. If not maintained, scaling and fouling may increase which shall reduce efficiency of cooling tower. To minimize scaling and fouling, the water should be filtered to remove particulates, and also be dosed with biocides and algaecides to prevent growths that could interfere with the continuous flow of the water. A cooling tower water treatment system is an arrangement of technologies that remove damaging impurities from your cooling tower feed water, circulation water, and/or blowdown. Cooling tower treatments shall be effective if done at right times. Real-Time Monitoring of related water parameters like pH, TDS, ORP plays a major role in planning and execution of maintenance of cooling tower. 

Parameters Monitored by WMS:

pH - Low pH increases corrosion. High pH increases scaling. Real time monitoring of pH and auto dosing helps to reduce corrosion and scaling issues.

TDS - TDS indicates overall water quality. Monitoring and maintaining desired TDS helps to maintain plant efficiency.

ORP - Helps to decide optimum dosages of biocides to get better control on biological activity.

Maintenance of cooling tower utility shall in turn have effect of increase in plant efficiency and quality.

 

IoT based WMS helps users to prevent the probable issues which may disturb the water quality in future. Our system comprises of various elements viz. sensors, meters, Intelli Connect System along with Android / Web / Windows App with data on secured cloud or Intranet servers.

 

Special sensors are used for measuring each one of these parameters, pH, TDS, ORP. These sensors are immersed in the cooling tower which enables WMS to read the current values of these parameters. Meters help in extracting the data from sensors, displaying on-screen in the field and providing data to Intelli-Connect platform. Intelli-Connect is IoT based platform which is used to extract real time data, monitor on computers/mobiles/handheld devices and store on cloud for further easy analysis.

Water Management System also helps to align industries with current era Business Intelligence. As an input to AI, WMS data also provides relevant data for Corrective and Preventive maintenance for continuous Improvement goals for business. Being critical raw material in most of the industries and important factor in various Go Green Policies across Globe, we must ensure WMS is properly implemented and tracked for overall benefits for all.

Click Here to Download WMS Demo App from Google PlayStore.