DWSD selects Emerson Ovation control and Scada

An Emerson Process Management product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 14, 2009

Emerson Process Management has modernised the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's (DWSD's) vast water and wastewater treatment complexes with its Ovation control and Scada solution.

This has helped DWSD to improve operational efficiency, maintain regulatory and environmental compliance and accommodate future system expansion.

With this major undertaking now complete, Emerson has entered the seven-year comprehensive systems maintenance portion (Phase Two) of the project.

DWSD, a municipally owned utility, provides roughly four million residents in south-east Michigan with an average of 710 million gallons of water per day.

Its main wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) - among the largest single-site WWTPs in the US - collects and treats residential, commercial and industrial wastewater for 78 municipal communities.

To enhance service, process and operational efficiency, and to meet the need for future expansion, DWSD initiated a multi-phase, multi-million-dollar upgrade programme encompassing its water-distribution system, wastewater-collection system and WWTP.

As part of this comprehensive programme, Emerson designed, assembled, tested and implemented a new department-wide instrumentation, control and computer system (ICCS).

The contract also called for Emerson to train more than 700 DWSD operators, maintenance technicians and engineers on the new ICCS, as well as maintain the system for a designated period of time.

The ICCS upgrade project covers more than 1,000 square miles and includes the WWTP, five water-treatment plants, 23 treated-water booster pump stations, five high-lift pump stations, 10 wastewater pump stations, three combined sewer overflow (CSO) basins, and more than 170 remote radio telemetry sites monitoring level, pressure and discharge.

Emerson installed a WWTP plant control center (PCC) connected to six new area-control centers (ACC), as well as an overall system-control center (SCC) that monitors and controls the entire water distribution system and wastewater-collection system.

The SCC features a 43 x 8ft video display wall that provides geographic images of the entire service area, including all facilities, pump stations and critical sensors.

For each facility and monitoring location, system information - including water pressure, valve positions, pump and equipment status, rain data, sewer levels and flows - is collected and broadcast over the network.

All the information received or generated by the system is also stored in a high-capacity historian so that it can be used to plot trends, analyse events and project future operational requirements.

In all, the Ovation network architecture features more than 40 integrated Ovation systems monitoring and controlling approximately 30,000 I/O points.

Replacing outdated controls with the Ovation system gives DWSD a number of significant benefits, including better management of distributed systems and remote sites, streamlined environmental reporting, improved water/wastewater process-control reliability and reduced operations and maintenance costs.

For example, because operators at the water distribution and wastewater-collection systems now have access to real-time data from throughout the system, they are able to more quickly detect and isolate system leaks as well as better react to rapidly changing conditions such as storm water inflow.

PJ Dada, assistant director of DWSD, said: 'The Ovation control system provides DWSD with a capability we did not have before - to access and analyse data on a department-wide basis.

'The value of the information available to us through the Ovation control system has streamlined our regulatory reporting, made it easier to quickly respond to disruptions and enables us to provide accurate and timely information to our customers - which translates into improved overall efficiency.' The Emerson Ovation solution offers an integrated control architecture that improves the economics of water and wastewater organisations by delivering greater insight into plant processes, assets and overall operations for enhanced operational flexibility, reliability and efficiency.

Water and wastewater-treatment facilities around the globe rely on Ovation to meet the challenges associated with aging infrastructures and population growth; comply with stringent environmental regulations; manage widespread, multiple-plant operations from a central operations centre; realise performance efficiencies; and attain significant, long-term maintenance cost savings.

Find out more about this article. Request a brochure, download technical specifications and request samples here.
Send to a friend Send to a friend
Print this page Print this page
Bookmark this page Bookmark this page

Not what you're looking for? Search the site.

Back to top Back to top

Find out more about this article or product Arrow

Contact Emerson Process Management

Contact Emerson Process Management

Tel (UK) 0870 240 1978

Visit Emerson Process Management website

Other Emerson Process Management stories

Contact Emerson Process Management

More stories More stories

Newsletter sign up

Request your free weekly copy of the Engineeringtalk email newsletter ...

Sign up now Sign up now

Browse by category

All suppliers A - Z

A Pro-talk Publication

A Pro-talk publication