Working with the water industry
Chris Anthony, General Manager of ABB’s Instrumentation factories in the UK, describes what ABB is doing to help water companies conserve one of our most precious resources – water.
Water companies around the world face intense competing pressures. In more developed countries, consumers expect to turn on the tap and get an instant supply of clean, cheap, water, while stakeholders have high expectations of a good return on their investment. Stringent regulations and Government-led performance targets will also largely determine their levels of income and investment in future years. In less developed areas the challenges are even greater. Even the weather is against them, with long, hot, dry summers threatening to bring supply problems to many parts of the globe.
All this is forcing water companies to get serious about making savings, both as a way of conserving resources and to protect their bottom line in a harsh commercial climate.
In terms of water, one key issue is preventing waste. In the distribution network that means tackling leaks, which is no mean feat in areas where much of the infrastructure dates back many, many years. Finding leaks is a tricky business and water industries are turning increasingly to district metering as a way of tracking them down.
District metering measures the flows entering and leaving a given section of the water distribution grid. If the meters are accurate enough, they can detect any unusual demand at times when most legitimate consumers are not using water. This helps water companies target their leak reduction programmes more effectively. ABB’s AquaMaster electromagnetic flow meters have revolutionised district metering and general flow measurement by providing accurate readings that mechanical meters simply can’t match.
With GSM-SMS functionality built into the AquaMaster, for example, operators are benefiting from hitherto unprecedented access to a range of information, from updates on current flow meter status through to data on meter parameters including flow rate, pressure, total water consumption, alarms and tariff totals.
Getting the best levels of efficiency and performance from the production process also requires reliable, accurate instrumentation. ABB’s WaterMaster flowmeters, for example, provide the flexibility to solve applications as diverse as water supply, wastewater, sewage and effluent treatment.
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