Water is an expensive and sometimes scarce commodity, and yet it is extremely undervalued and often wasted. In North America, the industrial sector is the biggest user of water, where high volumes are needed for processes like steam generation, cooling, sanitation, and process manufacturing operations. Monthly water bills are unable to identify baseline flows on a minute-by-minute basis, and do not have the ability to alert your team to asset-damaging leaks or unnecessary continuous flows.
So how do you make sure your organization makes the most out of every drop of this precious resource?
1. Embrace Industrial IoT metering technology
Industrial IoT (Internet of Things) or Industry 4.0 is the beautiful marriage of manufacturing and internet-connected sensors and equipment. A modern plant has an ecosystem of internet-enabled gateways and sensors installed throughout the facility, continually uploading data to the cloud that is always accessible from any phone, tablet, or computer on an intuitive browser-based dashboard. This is a powerful tool that has already been proven effective in reducing water utility costs by identifying anomalous data streams and alerting operators, managers, and owners to take immediate action. When monitoring water with Industrial IoT meters, every litre can be tracked, trended, and viewed in real-time.
In the past 5 years, the cost of IoT sensors and gateways has dropped significantly, which means an industrial water main and multiple sub-lines can all be monitored for just a few thousand dollars’ worth of hardware. Quantify Environmental has a suite of hardware that we can install to bring unprecedented visibility to your business. We can connect to existing meters on your main water lines, or install non-invasive ultrasonic water meters throughout your facility, and connect them to a modern, online dashboard for automated alerting and reporting!
2. Calculate the real cost of your water
It is easy to justify the cost of an Industrial IoT monitoring ecosystem when you consider how much your company is paying for water. Review your monthly bill and figure out what your plant is spending on a cubic meter (1000 L) of water, including any sewer discharge costs. A factory in Toronto, Ontario, for example, will spend $3 per cubic meter and most urban areas in Canada will have similar rates.
Consider that at this cost, any flow rate of just 10 litres per minute (LPM, about the flow rate of single kitchen sink) will cost your company over $15,000 per year, every year! With this new quantified cost consideration of water, you can review every hoses, tank overflow, nozzle manifold, and spray gun are costing your business. It’s no longer just “a bit” of water providing once-through cooling in your facility, it could be well over $50,000 per year in water charges!
3. Install, replace and maintain your nozzles
An engineered nozzle catalogue is about three pounds of high-gloss paper, and contains thousands of types of nozzles. There is a simple reason for this: every application requires a specific nozzle type that should be considered. Choosing the right size and shape of nozzle will not only save you money but also do the intended job much more effectively, increasing the efficiency of your process and quality of your product, while reducing labour and water costs.
If you have pipes with holes drilled in them at your plant, your company is no longer competitive, and these should be replaced as soon as possible. High pressures and poor water quality (hard water) can contribute to significant wear and tear on nozzles, leading to increased flow rates over time. Without precise data on water use, it is hard to spot a failed nozzle that is contributing to your company’s unnecessary water use and operational costs. A manifold of just 10 nozzles that is over 2 years old could be using an additional 1 LPM on every worn-out nozzle. Running these old nozzles for 16 hours per day is equal to over $10,000 of extra water used every year!
To reduce water consumption in your plant, consider replacing all existing brass nozzles with those made from stainless steel. Stainless steel offers significant benefits over brass, including better durability and resistance to erosion as well as being more resistant to corrosion from hard water conditions and strong chemicals used in many industrial processes such as acids. It is strongly recommended that once you have selected the best fit nozzle for the job, buy three each: one for installation today, one for replacement (as part of preventative maintenance program), and one that lives in your parts bin so your staff can reference it for replacement orders, as needed.
4. Use non-invasive ultrasonic meters
There are typically a handful of applications in a production facility that require once-through water and/or continuous overflow. One example would be a scalding tank at a poultry processing facility, where water is delivered by a 1″ to 3″ steel pipe and controlled by crudely adjusting a ball valve. Without a flow meter, there is no way to know exactly how much water is moving through this pipe, and as a result, varying flow rates can waste a lot of water and money, especially if the water is heated and/or conditioned beforehand.
Thankfully, non-invasive flow meters have become very affordable in recent years. Permanently installed ultrasonic flow meters affixed to the pipe will enable your production staff to “see” into the pipe and react to how much water is being consumed. This data can also be displayed in real-time on an online dashboard, which would allow management to trend water flows over time and react to periods of high flow. A few degrees nudged on a ball valve on a 2″ steel pipe can mean the difference between 25 LPM and 35 LPM, or a loss of more than $10,000 per year for a single ball valve.
5. Install shut-off and timed valves
Your staff have multiple tasks that need to be completed all at once, especially on busy Monday mornings! Here’s a common scenario: a team member needs to fill up a water tank first thing in the morning, so they turn on a ball valve. However, they then need to turn on a few other pieces of equipment and prepare some totes for the shift. Inevitably they need to attend to an unwrapped hose, left tangled up on the floor by the midnight sanitation shift! It’s only after lunch, 6 hours later, that they realize the valve is still open and water is flowing into the floor drains. A one-time cost of an automatic shut-off valve would stop this excess water flow from ever happening again. We are all busy, so it is worth the cost to invest in some simple controls to help your team and lower your water bill. It also takes the pressure off of your employees, and allows them to focus on more important tasks.
6. Install a wireless thermocouple in your boiler blow-down cooling water line
Boilers are water pigs! Nearly every process of a boiler requires expensive conditioned water that has been softened, heated, and treated with chemicals. This pushes the cost of this water from $3 to $6 per cubic metre! There are many ways to reduce the amount of water a boiler uses that should be considered and using internet-connected sensors is the best approach!
A common water loss point in a boiler system is the stream of fresh cold city water delivered to the boiler blow down tank to cool the water below the bylaw set temperature (~40 °C). City water is typically controlled by a solenoid valve that fails open when it breaks. This results in a continuous stream of cold city water running directly into your floor drains unseen for months at a flow rate of over 30 LPM, worth $45,000 per year! There is a simple and cost-effective way to eliminate this loss: install a wireless, internet-connected thermocouple in your boiler blow-down cooling line, and program it’s set point so that if temperatures stay below 15 °C for more than five hours, an alert goes out via email or text so you can get repair the broken solenoid ASAP!
7. Reprogram automated water controls twice per year
Like smoke alarms, programmed water systems are fantastic… if they are working, of course. Unfortunately, we quickly become very reliant on technology and often forget about the initial programming we put in place many years ago on a water-consuming process. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that all water control programs are reviewed seasonally when other tasks such as air compressor vents are open/closed. This will force your team to adjust the water use rates for the upcoming production season. An excess water flow of just 10 LPM during the winter months is worth the few minutes it takes to adjust the programming!
Conclusion
If you’ve stuck with this article this far, you must be someone that appreciates the power of data-driven decision making… And that’s great! You are now equipped with knowledge of some practical and cost-effective actions that can be taken to reduce water use in your facility.
As you can see, most solutions take little effort and typically have a Return on Investment (ROI) less than 1 year! The key is to get started, and then keep up the momentum as you become more familiar with these tools. If any of these ideas seem daunting on their own, don’t worry, we have plenty of resources available to help and would love to work with you to manage your water reduction goals at your facility!
Contact us today to schedule a free virtual or on-site consultation with our team, and start saving water and money today!
