Читать книгу Automation of Water Resource Recovery Facilities - Water Environment Federation - Страница 21

There are several reasons to automate a water resource recovery facility (WRRF). These include consistently meeting regulatory requirements; improving process performance and reliability; and saving chemicals, energy, and labor. Many utilities have realized that automation systems can provide a window into utility operations. As such, the effectiveness and efficiency of their daily operations are often directly linked to the integrity of their automation system. The result is that automation systems are beneficial in terms of operational effectiveness.

Some benefits represent a quantifiable savings to the utility, while other benefits cannot be quantified in the same way. When building a business case, it is important to account for both tangible, or quantifiable, economic components and intangible, or nonquantifiable, components. Developing an inventory of costs for energy, chemicals, and labor can be useful in identifying areas that have the highest cost; it also focuses automation efforts on areas with the highest savings potential.