Worldwide demand for water is increasing, while this valuable resource is becoming scarcer. The water industry relies on automated and digital concepts to treat water more efficiently, productively and competitively. Two goals are in the foreground: the safe supply/disposal as well as the economical use of resources. At the process level, Bürkert can provide support with practical solutions for the automation of ion exchangers, membrane filtration and media filtration.
Be it process or drinking water, the construction and operation of water treatment plants places growing demands on services. Automation can be implemented in three different ways: centralised, distributed and decentralised.
Three forms of automation explored
Centralised automation: everything in one place
A central control cabinet provides an overview of your plant. It offers space for the PLC, power supply, AC actuators, I/O systems, valve islands as well as communication interfaces. The valve island enables you to control processes via a central network of multi-way pneumatic valves.
Your benefits: The plug-and-play platform cuts engineering costs. The diagnostic functions on the device and at plant control level enable you to detect errors at an early stage.
Diagnostics and maintenance are service friendly and increase the availability of your plant. Easy access to manual override speeds up start up. Since the control cabinet is located outside the process, there are hardly any space restrictions and the systems can be easily extended as required.
Distributed automation: short paths
Control your plant with compact onsite control cabinets in the individual sections. Depending on the actual plant, you benefit from a number of advantages: short paths and flexible, space-saving assembly mean fast installation and safe processes.
The reduced consumption of compressed air and energy is profitable in terms of speed, energy costs and efficiency.
The individual process units with high valve concentrations are robust and easy to monitor and clean. Small, standardised control cabinets or field modules ensure your plant is transparent.
Thanks to the process proximity, you need fewer hoses, lines and cable trays. Your automated solution can be extended easily and quickly at any time.
Decentralised automation: lean and fast switching
With this concept, each process valve is controlled individually and supplied via its own intelligent control head. The process valves use LEDs to signal their actual switching state.
This simplifies onsite process monitoring, eliminates troubleshooting and guarantees plant availability. Key advantages: the intelligent, fast-switching valve systems are particularly flexible, clearly arranged and safe.
They have a hygienic, easy-to-clean design and can be quickly started up, maintained and extended.
The process proximity reduces the need for compressed air, pneumatic hoses, lines and cable trays, thereby further shortening process valve switching times. This also helps to reduce your energy costs.
Regardless of the type of automation that works best for you, the task is always the same; controlling all inflows and outflows by means of pneumatic actuator and control technology.
As the fluid control experts, Bürkert begins by asking the right questions first, exploring your successes, your challenges and areas where you wish to improve or future proof processes to find the best possible solution and to decide which concept suits your plant best.
Bürkert flexibility
With the aid of numerous monitoring and diagnostic functions, Bürkert’s range of sensor technology, valve technology, pneumatics and control cabinet technology enables safe processes and preventive maintenance.
You save resources, receive relevant information and benefit from the automatic documentation of your data.
Automation should make your processes simpler and more efficient. All three Bürkert concepts ensure this to an equal degree. The fieldbus module Type ME43 acts as a standardised interface for the devices.
It transfers their communication to common industry standards. The technology minimises the amount of planning and installation effort, material usage and the risk of errors.
We make ideas flow.
This partner content is brought to you by Bürkert. For more information, visit https://www.burkert.com.au/en.
