Project Introduction
Access to clean water is one of the most important aspects of everyone’s life. As communities grow, most water treatment plants scale their processes to collect and process water to meet the added demands of the area. Water treatment plants can be very large in size, and usually include land for storage tanks, processes, sediment ponds, maintenance buildings, and more. Water is collected from multiple wells, reservoirs and rivers, and then pumped to the water treatment plant, where it is treated and then delivered to customers. To monitor and control processes, utilities have traditionally relied on proprietary communication protocols, so the costs of installation, maintenance, and replacement of spare parts can be high.
The Aha Sa water plant in Korea is a major water treatment facility that has supported the local area’s population and industrial growth for the last twenty years. The plant treats nearly all of the water used in the district using workstations interfaced with proprietary PLC control equipment to control pumps, valves, and other equipment that moves the water through the various treatment processes. The Aha Sa water plant wanted to upgrade their network infrastructure with state-of-the-art Ethernet technology that was readily available, cost-effective to integrate, and which could help collect data from numerous locations throughout the plant. An added benefit included Ethernet’s ability to allow seamless upgrading for future and expansion.