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Gold/Mining/Energy : Unitec Int. Controls Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John B. Smyth who wrote (320)	4/15/1998 12:29:00 AM
From: John B. Smyth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 856

Sewage collection systems, like the drainage monitoring and control is also an important part of risk management in the Municipal SCADA system. And like the drainage systems are normally designed to use gravity to efficiently collect the effluent from residential, commercial and industrial sources. The effluent flows into collection chambers normally called "Wet Wells". Typically these are concrete chambers or fiberglass tanks. The station is called a Sewage Pump or a Sewage Lift station. The collection lines have a relatively shallow graduated slope in order that the water will carry the solids with it to the collection wet well. If the liquids flow too fast, the solids will remain in the lines where the will eventually plug up. Depending on the size of the area serviced, the wet wells may hold a few hundred gallons to several thousand gallons of effluent. The wet well will employ one or more specialized effluent pumps (designed to handle solids) to pump the material to higher elevations, where it can be gravity feed to the final treatment or discharge point. The pumps cycle "ON and OFF" to purge the well in a single flush. If a failure occurs at a sewage lift station, basements will back up with sewage, and again, the City is liable for damages. Like the drainage stations, in the past, "idiot lights" have been used (mounted on top of the lift stations) to indicate a failed status. Maintenance crews regularly drive by and check that these stations are operable. SCADA systems provide real-time continuos monitoring of the sewage lift stations. It monitors effluent level, pump motor winding and bearing temperatures, and other parameters as desired. The reduction of labor cost to check the sites, again, is insignificant in contrast to the damage that can incur and the potential liability to the municipality if a failure is undetected and effluent backs up into residential basements. If the event of an electrical outage, where the wet well does not have sufficient capacity to handle the volume, the municipality must quickly disperse portable generators to keep the sewage moving. SCADA provides real-time monitoring and the ability to respond to the most critical stations first. Another concern to the municipalities is the degradation of their sewage lines and infiltration of ground water into the sewage systems. Programs called "Inflow & Infiltration Abatement" (I & I Abatement) are being implemented to check the integrity of the sewage collections system. This is where Unitec has provided some very cost effective features in its systems. We first implemented I & I Abatement for the City of Burnaby. Their Municipal Engineer called to inquire what the cost would be to add Mag-Meters to each lift station to measure inflow. After inquiring the purpose and finding that the municipality could be facing up to $750K in costs, we quickly came up with a solution that required no extra equipment. The processing horsepower of our RTUs and accuracy of our measurement capability allowed us to creatively compute the I & I values internally. We now offer this as a standard feature in our Municipal SCADA systems. People often pass by the little green or grey kiosks in their residential area not knowing what they are for. In many cases, they are the electrical control center to the lift station. Questions will be appreciated, but if none, I will next focus on Natural Gas Collection SCADA Systems.