Applying digital solutions to protect our waterways
Sector: Water Utilities
Challenge: Alleviating safety concerns
With the state of the UK’s rivers under scrutiny, the government is renewing the call for water utilities to clean up their act. But the challenge of managing an aging, sprawling infrastructure is significant: on average, water mains in the UK are 74 years old – and 7% have been underground for more than 150 years.
At Xylem, we understand the impact this has on utilities already faced with increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, and under pressure to work within tighter budgets.
We partner with water companies to ease that burden, by providing proactive maintenance tools to target repairs and upgrades where they are most needed, and with a range of market-leading smart water solutions to help utilities stay ahead of the compliance curve. With our help, utilities can keep networks running efficiently while making savings in the long term by optimising performance and extending the life cycle of valuable assets.
Cleaning up water treatment
Our technological solutions can build financial resilience through improved operations to reliably deliver safe drinking water that meets stringent safety standards.
We are constantly developing new ways to make your equipment work for you – like OptiDetect, our new pressure monitoring system that can spot quartz sleeve breakages on drinking water ultraviolet light (UV) disinfection systems. It instantly recognises a quartz sleeve failure and shuts the system down, avoiding the danger of shards or materials flowing through the pipework to reduce costly system damage, water waste and unplanned downtime.
Averting clean water network failures
Xylem’s solutions can provide real-time and predictive insights to offer increased visibility of networks and get ahead of issues before they escalate. Our decision intelligence tools use advanced analytics to accurately predict potential ruptures or breakages: by targeting maintenance and repairs to the most crucial sites, utilities can avoid leakages and unexpected interruptions to supply.
One example is the PipeDiver platform, a free-swimming condition assessment tool for water and wastewater pipelines capable of providing utilities with a far more accurate view of potential troublespots, thanks to its ability to map pipeline networks and locate very small leaks and gas pockets.
Or our SoundPrint Acoustic Fiber Optic (AFO) monitoring system can detect and locate wire breaks in prestressed concrete cylinder pipes and alert utilities to structural changes in near real time, allowing pipeline owners to proactively manage assets with greater confidence and reduce the risk of dangerous and expensive failures and unplanned operational expenses.
Read more about how Xylem’s advanced inspection, evaluation and continuous monitoring techniques helped the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission save $42m and reduce pipe failures by over 73% here.
Trading wastewater network storage
With more than 400,000 raw sewage spills via storm overflows recorded in 2020 according to the Rivers Trust, the safety of our rivers and seas is a correct priority – and set to remain so as the Met Office predicts extended periods of extreme winter rainfall to be seven times more likely in future.
Our wastewater network assessment technologies, including real-time monitoring, data analytics and system modelling, offer the ability to ‘trade’ available network storage and utilise existing capacity to help solve the challenge of managing CSOs. Xylem’s real-time decision support system has the power to transform urban watershed management by reducing flooding incidents by as much as 30% and therefore minimising the likelihood of penalties. Furthermore, it can integrate with infrastructure already in place.
Read more about how our bespoke supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system enabled operators to coordinate discharge needs and better distribute flow across 2,500 pumping stations in the Netherlands here.
Enhancing wastewater treatment
We know proactive maintenance and data-driven insights are critical for the protection of wastewater treatment works which is why our intelligent tools enable utilities to predict risks to better cope with the unexpected. For data-driven recommendations for optimising plant performance without new infrastructure, our Treatment Systems Optimisation uses virtual sensors to create a digital twin and help plant operators accurately estimate influent concentration to efficiently operate the aeration process and reduce energy usage by up to 26%, or 1.1 million kWh annually.
From the latest ozone treatment kits to top-of-the-range UV disinfection systems, our extensive knowledge can help tailor a solution that suits the application – for both new plant installations and retrofits.
And our Xylem TotalCare services apply our engineering expertise where it is needed, like our portable liquid cleaning process for both membrane and ceramic diffusers which runs while the diffusers are in operation, meaning no downtime while ensuring optimal equipment performance.
Balancing rising needs with limited resources
We are here to help utilities with their mission to keep networks functioning effectively and to safely protect drinking water and bathing water. With the need to do more with less limiting the widespread replacement of assets, particularly in urban areas, our digital tools offer a plug-and-play solution that brings decision intelligence to predict risks and enable water leaders to react and adapt.
This more agile approach facilitates data-driven decisions to target investment where it is needed most, optimising operations at a lower cost without compromising on compliance or customer safety.