How Analytics Can Improve Industrial Wastewater Operations
If you are the manager of manufacturing or industrial operations, you know how important it is to understand how each aspect of the process performs and how that impacts your bottom line. Wastewater treatment may not immediately present as a ‘make or break’ component in a manufacturing or industrial operation. However, with increasing scrutiny on the quality of water leaving industrial sites coupled with the rising cost of water, optimizing your wastewater treatment can reduce costs and improve business outcomes.
Optimizing wastewater treatment at your sites may not mean an expensive equipment upgrade. With the right tools, you can use your current operational data to see trends and identify ways to improve wastewater treatment performance. An integrated analytical program using predictive analytics will help you enhance industrial wastewater operations.
What you can learn from your data with analytics
An integrated analytical program collects raw data over time and generates reports that summarize the data and produce graphs that show trends. Being able to look at each specific element of the treatment system makes the data far more useful. Analytics can help you:
- optimize the treatment process
- compare systems in multiple locations
- ensure continuous regulatory compliance
- expand options for recycling and reusing wastewater
- keep wastewater chemical costs low
- identify equipment deficiencies
How is wastewater data collected
Now that sensors and technology are more efficient and affordable, many companies are seeing the value of investing in analytical programs for their operations. Placing sensors in key points of the wastewater process is standard. Operators and controllers use that data in real-time to keep the process running efficiently. For example, membrane filters often have sensors placed before and after the filtering process to monitor critical parameters like suspended solids (TSS).
Analytical technology can use that same data, collected over time, to improve equipment efficiency, estimate the life expectancy of critical components, and plan for upgrades, updates, or retrofits. Understanding your data helps flag emerging issues, both at a site-level and when comparing multiple sites.
Analytics to optimize the treatment process
There are many benefits to being able to compare and contrast wastewater treatment systems across multiple locations. Integrated data across sites allow the comparison of wastewater generation and treatment between locations. By being able to see data from different facilities with similar goals and waste, larger corporations can drive efficiency through reduced inputs in terms of chemicals, operator time, and improved effluent quality.
Analytics to ensure continuous regulatory compliance and expand options for recycling and reusing wastewater
The criteria for meeting wastewater compliance and recycling wastewater is usually similar. A breach in a water quality standard will cost you money (compliance fees or surcharges), and sending poor quality recycled water back into the process can lead to significant problems with production.
When it comes to compliance, monitoring critical control points and using real-time data with limits set that activate controllers or alert operators of low-quality effluent is your last defense line. With an integrated analytics program, any gradual declines in the performance of treatment components over time become apparent, allowing you to take action long before any alerts.
Contact MacDermid Envio for Wastewater Analytics Solutions
Predictive analytics is a powerful tool for managers. Using historical data to predict future events helps you optimize your wastewater treatment operations over time and across multiple sites. This leads to reduced costs, increased efficiency, and confidence in regulatory compliance.
MacDermid Envio is always looking for ways to innovate. By combining innovative automation technology (link to automation post or webpage), with a powerful analytical program, MacDermid Envio can help you optimize your industrial wastewater treatment system. They are piloting analytics programs at customers’ facilities today that will save them money and improve performance.
Contact MacDermid Envio about their analytical programs today. It’s time to take control of your data and use predictive analytics to work for you.
Written by a MacDermid Envio Solutions Subject Matter Expert