Sensorship in the Water Sector

Jim Lauria

Sensorship in the water sector is an issue of growing importance, something that will touch all of us right where we live.

I don’t mean censorship. (We in the water industry are free to say whatever we want, and even to criticize the sorry state of our nation’s water infrastructure, which is leaking away precious resources and positioning us for disaster.) I mean sensor-ship—the increasing importance of monitoring all aspects of our water supply in an effort to manage it more effectively.

Lori Ditoro, editor of Flow Control magazine, recently shared with me her observations on the spectacular growth in sensors in the water market.
“According to a Freedonia Group report, ‘U.S. sales of sensors are forecast to climb at a 6.1 percent annual rate through 2016. Process variable sensors will remain the largest category, while chemical property sensors and proximity and positioning sensors will post the fastest growth,’” she says. “In the past, many industrial processes were managed based on an operator’s five senses. As process engineers and others charged with managing operations demand a full understanding of their processes, the requirement for sensors will increase.”

Some of those sensors may even end up deployed on engineers themselves. I’m a case in point. Just a couple of weeks ago, I won a Fitbit in a drawing at a meeting of the California Agricultural Irrigation Association. It’s an amazing device. It can tell me how much I’ve walked, how I slept, and even how the energy I burn doing exercise compares to my caloric intake. It’s a powerful sensor and an exceptional tool for helping manage my health and fitness. What we measure, we manage.

We’ve got that power in the water industry, too. Flow, pressure, pH, conductivity, turbidity, temperature and chemical content can all be measured with uncanny accuracy, and that data can be used for system monitoring and control.

In my last Pulse piece, I pointed out that farmers now need to track their inputs meticulously to stay profitable and ensure that they remain in compliance with environmental regulations. We’re seeing the same thing in municipal and industrial water—the deep need to keep track of everything that goes into, or comes out of, our water.

Through sensors—and the SCADA systems that integrate them with water treatment technologies in a feedback loop—we can optimize the use of chemicals and energy in water treatment. We can help ensure compliance with regulatory limits on pollutants in water for environmental discharge, ranging from biochemical oxygen demand to phosphorus to temperature. And we can illustrate and quantify the quality of treated water, a vital step in valuing recycled water and connecting the resource with its best use.

Of course, getting good data from a sensor starts with putting the sensor in the proper place. In a recent Flow Control article, Srikanth Pathapati and I described how we use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at Mazzei not only to optimize mass transfer in gas/liquid systems, but also to determine where to position sensors for the most accurate reading of the performance of the system. With CFD, we can determine the point at which we should be seeing the optimum results - the place where we achieve a homogeneous mixture. With sensors, we can measure whether the system is performing as designed. And with good judgment, we can continue to improve how we manage our water.

I’m no fan of censorship. But I’m a huge proponent of sensorship.