Emerson to Automate Philadelphia’s Baxter Water Treatment Plant

Emerson Process Management has announced it has been awarded a contract to automate the Philadelphia Water Department’s (PWD) Baxter Water Treatment Plant. The contract, awarded by PKF Mark III, Inc., calls for Emerson to replace the plant’s existing outdated controls with its Ovation expert control system.

The Baxter Water Treatment Plant, the largest of Philadelphia’s three water treatment plants, processes 200 million gal per day and provides drinking water to 60% of Philadelphia’s population, as well as portions of Lower Bucks County. Because the plant is so vital to meeting the water needs of area residents, there can be no disruption in plant operation. For that reason, installation of the Ovation system is taking place within a PWD-specified, four-year implementation schedule.

To ensure a seamless transition over the designated timeframe, the existing ABB INFI 90 system and Ovation system will run in parallel until all control functionality has been transferred to Ovation. When fully up and running, the Ovation system will monitor and control all major plant equipment and processes—including disinfection, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration and final treatment—as well as chemical usage. In all, Emerson will supply 13 redundant Ovation controllers and eight operator/engineer workstations that will manage roughly 3,100 I/O points.

Emerson’s state-of-the-art Ovation system supports fully integrated digital bus-based technologies, including Foundation fieldbus, DeviceNet and PROFIBUS DP. At the Baxter plant, the Ovation system will provide operators with valuable insight into the operation of intelligent PROFIBUS DP devices installed at the facility. Armed with this predictive intelligence, operators will be able to identify and troubleshoot potential problems before they impact plant operations.

Emerson’s Power & Water Solutions division will engineer and install the Ovation system. Cut-over to the new system is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2009 and is expected to be completed well ahead of the designated four-year implementation schedule.

Source: Emerson Process Management