Innovatreat is building the future of wastewater treatment
How Innovatreat approaches developing water treatment systems of the future.
To meet strict state regulations, Innovatreat had to reconsider its traditional approach to machine control design. By partnering with ifm, they found a more flexible system architecture that laid the foundation for them to bring their innovative processes to life.
Benefits
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| Reduced total cost of ownership | Gained remote monitoring | Improved operator experience |
Estimated savings
- Reduced main control cabinet size by half resulting in a total savings of $30,000.
- Reduced PLC panel costs by $30,000 for each of the three membrane skids resulting in a total savings of $90,000.
- Future systems will eliminate cabinet panels for each membrane reactor, saving an additional $20,000 per skid.
Total savings for this project was $120,000 in machine control hardware costs by partnering with ifm.
Project Goal
Innovatreat had to design and build a decentralized wastewater treatment system for Lakeside at Trappe, a new, rural community neighborhood. Due to the location of this development near Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the new wastewater system needed to meet extremely stringent effluent discharge limits. This is a unique challenge because the system has to treat the water effectively for as little as 100 homes while having a capacity for the eventual 2,501 homes of the planned development.
The challenge
Nitrogen and Phosphorus (nutrients) are major pollutants known to have degraded water quality in the Chesapeake Bay over the last century, and Maryland’s Department of the Environment (MDE) has imposed strict nutrient limits on all wastewater plants in the region. Innovatreat’s miniMBR® technology was selected due to its capability to meet extremely stringent nitrogen and phosphorus effluent limits.
Application conditions
This project has unique considerations, including:
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Extended periods of underloaded conditions
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Strict nitrogen and phosphorous limits
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Cyclical operational windows
This wastewater system needs to accommodate the phasing-in flow as homes are sold and become occupied. During the first phase of development, the plant will see extended periods of operation with severely underloaded conditions. Underloaded wastewater plants face significant biological process challenges when tasked with meeting strict nitrogen limits.
Challenges of traditional PLC architecture
For decades, wastewater infrastructure has utilized analog PLC technology that:
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Increases difficulty of implementation
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Requires specialized programming expertise
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Limits functionality without additional computer-based SCADA systems
While the neighborhood has a small number of completed homes, the system runs one of the three miniMBR® membrane skids. With such low flow initially, there were important operational windows for wastewater treatment that increased the importance of data trending on a graphical display. To overcome these challenges, Innovatreat needed a more powerful control architecture.
Originally, Innovatreat skids required a large control panel to protect the analog controls of the main pump.
The ifm solution
For this important project, Innovatreat decided to break with convention and integrate the ifm HMI controller on the miniMBR® to achieve precise control over their novel and innovative membrane technology. It combines PLC functionality, an HMI display, data logging, and IIoT digital sensor communication in one device. This new architecture enabled:
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Easier project adaptation
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Quicker setup and programming
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Powerful data logging and trending
The simplified control architecture leverages IO-Link communication protocols to monitor sensor data in real-time. The field-mountable IO-Link masters reduced reliable on costly control cabinets and reducing wiring. Additionally, the digital sensor data improved data quality with increased resolution that captured the changes in the treated mixture during severely underloaded operating conditions. This was significantly more difficult with traditional control architecture.
Main control interface
The HMI controller provides a touchscreen display of the entire treatment process with all real-time process values, including temperature, flow rate, and valve position. Programmed threshold levels provide alarm notifications to operators if any value deviates from the acceptable value band to enable immediate intervention. It provides more intuitive controls for operators, resulting in better process monitoring, graphical readouts, and overall telemetry.
After transitioning to the field-mountable HMI controller above, Innovatreat reduced the main pump panel size that resulted in $30,000 of savings.
Updates to the miniMBR® control panels
Previously, each Innovatreat Membrane BioReactor (MBR) used PLC controls. This required a control panel at each skid that relied on manual programming changes with any update. Manual programming of four different PLCs introduces the risk of a programming error.
Previous analog controls
The original analog control panel for each MBR skid.
Simplified digital controls
With the HMI controller managing all three MBR skids, the control panel on each system was reduced. On future systems, this panel will be removed entirely and the few remaining connections will move to the "Membrane Laundry" panel. This further consolidation will result in additional cost savings.
The reduced control panel cabinet after transitioning to the HMI controller.
Technologies
Explore each of the platforms for more information.
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HMI Controller combines PLC, HMI, and IIoT data flow functionality in one device with incredible performance. |
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IO-Link technology is the foundation of scalable automation solutions, and is embedded in most ifm sensors. |
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Smart flow sensors that measure media temperature, flow rate, and total volume in one device. |
Results
Reducing system cost and complexity
The ifm HMI controller provides a significantly simpler control architecture. Combined with IO-Link and smart sensors, this technology stack reduces the complexity and risks of manual programming errors. In the past, a system of this size would have required manual parameter updates to four separate PLCs by a specialist any time the system needed a change. Now, all MBR parameters are updated from one controller with threshold alarms and an intuitive graphical interface. With $120,000 in hardware savings, future iterations of the skid systems will further reduce costs by an estimated $20,000 per membrane skid system.
Gaining remote access
Access to remote monitoring and control helps smaller, more rural wastewater infrastructure ensure adequate operations. Treatment systems that do not have continual operation for 24 hours per day may only have operators on-site for a few hours per week. Remote monitoring capabilities are essential to maintaining operations, alerting operators proactively, and protecting the ecosystem.
Improving the operator experience
With a touchscreen interface, operators have significantly more insight into the processes in real-time and reduce new employee training requirements. They can simply toggle between each step of the process, ensure each valve and sensor is performing correctly, and access dashboards from anywhere.
Preparing for the future
This interoperable technology stack and foundation built on digital communication future-proofs Innovatreat's machine design. The plug-and-play sensor, IO-Link communication, and HMI controller all work together to reduce costs, accelerate system development, increase measurement accuracy, and prepare for future state regulations with a modular system design.
A comparison of untreated and treated wastewater at the Trappe, MD facility.
Conclusion
Innovatreat is now considering future iterations and additional innovative solutions that are made possible with the improvements of the ifm controls architecture. With the power of this system, they can develop artificial intelligence (AI) models that factor in unique parameters important to their various customers to help predict wastewater demand.
They are confident that their machine control architecture is equipped to meet any future regulatory requirements from the State of Maryland and have the flexibility to develop even more innovative solutions without the limits of traditional analog technology.
