In today's fast-paced world, staying ahead of potential equipment failures is crucial to maintaining smooth operations, especially in water management. A predictive water management strategy offers a proactive approach through smart systems and artificial intelligence. This is possible by combining continuous data monitoring, remote communications, intelligent sensors, and ongoing trends to forecast when equipment might show signs of abnormality—before a failure occurs. This allows you to avoid unplanned outages and unnecessary maintenance costs, helping you and your facility run more efficiently.
What Is Predictive Water Management?
At its core, predictive water management focuses on preventing equipment failure, maximizing equipment life and minimizing downtime. This is done by reducing corrosion, scale and microbiological contamination. By analyzing real-time data from our smart systems, analytics can identify patterns and detect issues early on. This means you can address the underlying causes of potential failures, either fixing them or preventing them entirely.
One of the biggest advantages of predictive strategies is that they work 24/7. As long as your system is running, the smart system continuously monitors it, ensuring that any issues are spotted in real time. This is especially valuable in facilities where staffing may be limited, as it helps ensure that problems are caught early, without needing constant human oversight. Instead of just telling you there is a problem, you are told what the problem is and potentially what caused it.
Benefits of a Predictive Approach
A predictive water management strategy not only helps in reducing unexpected downtime but also optimizes maintenance and operational costs. By keeping a close eye on equipment health, it prevents over-maintenance (which can be costly) or under-maintenance (which can lead to more severe problems).
Assuring the water treatment program operates in the optimum ranges also maximizes water, chemical and energy savings. This leads to significant financial benefits and protects your sustainability goals!
According to the Department of Energy, predictive maintenance can save a facility around 12% compared to traditional preventive maintenance and 40% compared to reactive maintenance. These savings can have a significant impact on your annual budget and help you plan your resources more efficiently.
Real-World Examples:
Example 1: Sensor Monitoring
Let’s look at a simple yet effective example of how the analytic strategies work. Suppose your system relies heavily on a sensor reading to keep parameters in range. While you may already clean this sensor on a routine schedule, yet it is still susceptible to premature fouling. The smart system has the ability to read the sensor and can alert you if the sensor needs cleaning before the next scheduled maintenance. If the system detects any irregularities—such as exceeding program limits—the controller can send an alarm, letting you know that the sensor needs attention. This kind of real-time feedback is invaluable in preventing small issues from escalating.
Example 2: No Chemical Feed
Below are graphs depicting an example of how smart systems, artificial intelligence and predictive analysis will work in the new Aquassist platform. The first graph shows a feed event for the chlorine pump was missed on the 18th. This alone is a triggered event notifying the operators and water treatment rep of a known “out of range” condition.
The second graph shows a decline in the ORP values. The circled area shows a drifting condition, which would trigger a notification. Notice the second arrow showing a lower point on the graph. This is the point where an alarm would normally be triggered. This is how we receive alarms today. An alarm indicating a low reading has been established. This could take hours or days to reach this low point. However, with the Aquassist Smart Systems & AI capabilities, the system can evaluate abnormal or trending conditions that are outside of the normal control range. A notification is sent much sooner, allowing an operator or representative to correct the problem. In this case, the notification would include the intel the pump did not feed the chemical as expected, providing personnel with more valuable information to help correct the condition.
The Investment and Planning Behind Predictive Maintenance
While the benefits of predictive water management are clear, implementing such a strategy requires careful planning and an increased investment. The upfront costs for Smart Systems, data management, sensors, and testing devices can be considerable, but long-term savings and improved efficiency often outweigh the initial investment.
Watertech’s state-of-the-art Aquassist water analysis tool is the first step to implementing a Predictive Water Treatment Program!
- Supports operators in their water treatment tasks.
- Generates sustainable savings on time, energy and maintenance.
- Proactive prediction with customized graphics interpretation and accelerated problem detection.
- Boosts operational efficiency and productivity, saving time and streamlining processes.
- Calculates environmental gains, such as reductions in CO2.
Conclusion
Incorporating a predictive water management strategy into your facility maintenance plan can significantly enhance operational efficiency. By addressing potential issues before they become costly problems, you can reduce costs, downtime, and extend equipment lifespan. Although it requires a thoughtful implementation strategy and an initial investment, the return on investment through cost savings and reduced downtime is well worth it.
In summary, predictive water management is a game-changer for any facility looking to take a smarter approach to maintenance. By using data and real-time insights, you can ensure your equipment runs smoothly while keeping costs and downtime to a minimum. Now that you understand the benefits of a predictive maintenance strategy, stay tuned for our March blog which will go more in depth about some of the tools and equipment needed to analyze data and help detect issues.
To learn more, reach out to Watertech and one of our technical engineers will be in touch.
Dennis Kwasny
Territory Manager – Northern WI
Dennis has worked in the water treatment industry for over 30 years and has experience in boiler, cooling and wastewater chemical treatment programs. Dennis leads educational training events and seminars to promote better water management and improve safety. He is a Certified Water Technologist (CWT). Connect with Dennis on
LinkedIn.