Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems are monitored and maintained using a combination of SCADA, laboratory analysis and manual inspections. Changing factors such as temperature, feed water quality, permeate flow and system recovery can all have an effect on membrane performance. “Normalizing” RO data allows comparison of membrane performance to a baseline reference condition which does not depend on changing operating conditions. Current practices include extraction of required (input) data from data warehouses, cleaning the data (missing values, lower and upper bound violations, etc.), using a manufacturer provided model to calculate normalized data, and finally analyzing the outputs. This, in turn, enables plant operators and managers to determine the membrane condition (fouling, scaling, system rejection) and scheduling of maintenance activities to optimize the operation, reliability and maximize membrane life. Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD) has four membrane treatment facilities with multiple trains and stages. Decision making from the SCADA data is viewed as difficult due to tedious, inefficient processes for data cleanup and normalization. For example, it was estimated at IRWD that one person would require up to eight hours to manually clean and normalize one month’s data for just one membrane facility. An automated data cleanup and normalization system was developed to manage and monitor plant performance indicators in near real time without user intervention. The system eliminated the manual time required for this process. Several operations and management dashboards provide up-to-date information on key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics related to membrane system performance, required maintenance and replacement. This paper includes an explanation of this system and a discussion of the resulting efficiencies and outputs leading to better management of IRWD’s membrane facilities.
This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.
Speaker
- Nathan Boyle / Dawn Guendert / Sanjay Guendert / Arseny Kalinsky
Company
- Hazen and Sawyer / Irvine Ranch Water District
Event
- AMTA/AWWA Membrane Technology Conference, Long Beach, CA
Session
- AMTA/AWWA Membrane Technology Conference
Date
- 02/14/17
Media
Keywords
- Operations, Optimization
Reference
- 9676-DP1969