A Quick Guide to Maintaining and Upgrading Industrial Water Treatment Systems
Industrial water treatment systems are crucial for ensuring that process and waste streams meet necessary quality standards. Compromised equipment can lead to a host of problems, ranging from production disruptions to product quality or safety issues. That’s why it’s so important to implement a maintenance regimen that keeps your equipment running as it should for as long as possible. In this article, we’ll outline the components of a preventative maintenance regimen, and look at some approaches for dealing with aging water treatment systems.
Preventative maintenance
A preventative maintenance program is a set of routine tasks aimed at avoiding equipment failure by keeping water treatment systems in good working order. A good maintenance program yields benefits like longer service life for equipment, more efficient performance, lower operational costs, and a reduced risk of system failure and unexpected downtime.
The key to preventative maintenance is establishing a regular schedule. This can be done through a few different approaches:
- Time-based maintenance refers to scheduling tasks on a given calendar interval. Examples of time-based maintenance can include replacing a reverse osmosis pre-filter once per month, or testing ion exchange resin once per year. Calendar-based scheduling is easy to plan, although it may take some trial and error to strike a balance between over- and under-maintaining your equipment.
- Usage-based maintenance involves scheduling tasks based on actual system use. To do so, a facility will use meters or other methods to monitor use, and complete maintenance tasks once a certain threshold is reached. One example of usage-based maintenance is running a clean-in-place (CIP) cycle for every 1 million gallons treated by an ultrafiltration
- Condition-based maintenance is done by monitoring process conditions, like heat, pressure, vibration, or energy consumption, and completing maintenance tasks when measurements begin to move outside the acceptable range. This is common in membrane separation systems, which operators monitor decreases in flow rates, flux, and permeate quality, as well as increases in pressure. All of these indicate the need for cleaning or other maintenance. Facilities are also increasingly adopting predictive maintenance tech that analyzes these types of data to better anticipate maintenance needs.
A preventative maintenance program can include many different tasks, which can depend on the types of equipment in use, plant capacity, and other factors. Facilities often use a blend of scheduling methods to manage all these tasks, so a maintenance program can be quite complex. Good recordkeeping is key to ensuring that all maintenance tasks are completed as planned.
Inspection
A maintenance inspection is an examination to assess equipment condition and identify any potential problems. This can include inspection for any visible wear, damage, or blockages in tanks, pumps, pipes, valves, drains, probes, sensors, lines or other components. It can also include taking readings from pressure gauges and electronic controllers as well as inspecting chemical dosing systems. They are useful for identifying wear or damage to components so that the necessary repairs or replacements can be arranged before the equipment fails. Where water treatment systems are concerned, inspections are particularly useful for catching small leaks early. This helps to minimize the waste of water or other valuable resources and prevent safety hazards. Observations from regular inspections can also help to refine the scheduling of other maintenance tasks.
Backwashing & cleaning
Water treatment and separation technologies need regular cleaning to perform at their best, and deliver the longest possible service life, not only for the equipment itself, but also for consumables like membranes and IX resins. Cleaning methods for water treatment systems may include the application of water and chemical solutions to dissolve scale or other deposits, air scrubbing, or other techniques. To make maintenance cleaning easier, many of today’s water treatment technologies are equipped with automated clean-in-place (CIP) technology that eliminates the need to manually disassemble equipment for cleaning purposes. In addition to these deeper cleaning practices, systems may also require regular backwashing, which is done by reversing the normal flow of water through a unit to dislodge debris or contaminants and flush them out of the equipment.
When developing a cleaning regimen, it is important to carefully consider the needs and limitations of each piece of equipment, since using aggressive chemicals, high heat, or high pressure can damage equipment and degrade materials like membrane elements or IX resins. If in doubt, be sure to consult equipment manufacturers and cleaning chemical manufacturers for information on recommended cleaning protocols.
Testing & calibration
System tests are used to assess the condition and performance of equipment and consumables. This often includes effluent quality testing by measuring electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids (TDS), or pH values of streams following treatment. Routine water quality testing is important not just for assessing system performance, but also for compliance purposes, since most facilities need to maintain a certain level of quality either in their process water or effluent streams to meet regulatory requirements or POTW acceptance criteria.
Routine testing may also refer to measuring the equipment itself, such as by monitoring pressure, temperature, flow rates, energy consumption, or other variables. Results outside of the expected range on any of these can help facilities identify and correct any potential issues before they result in further damage.
To ensure reliable test data, facilities also need to maintain and calibrate measurement tools and controllers. This can include components like flow meters, pH and chemical sensors, instrumentation, and thermometers, all of which needs to be regularly checked and adjusted to ensure accurate measurements.
Repair & replacement
Even with the most diligent preventative maintenance, components and even whole systems will inevitably need to be repaired, replaced, or even upgraded to meet changing needs. Knowing what options are available to deal with aging equipment can help you to identify the best course of action when the time comes, no matter whether you want to minimize costs or downtime, improve efficiency, increase capacity, or meet other goals.
Spare parts
Minimizing downtime is not just a matter of anticipating failures—it’s also about having a plan in place to ensure that any needed repairs can be carried out quickly. That’s why it’s crucial to have an accessible supply of spare parts. Essential components like valves, instrumentation, fittings, pumps, and sensors all can wear out over time, as can more specialized items like filter media, membrane elements, and IX resins. The more specialized the component, the longer it can take to source the part, especially with supply chain disruptions becoming more of a common occurrence.
While storing spare parts at your location is the most obvious solution, it’s not practical for many facilities who have limited storage space. Some vendors, like SAMCO, help to solve this problem by maintaining an extensive spare parts and consumables inventory in its domestic warehouse space to minimize shipping time.
Full-system replacement
As it ages, water treatment equipment may run less efficiently and become more prone to leaks and clogs, which can lead to higher operational costs due to the need for more manpower, and losses due to downtime. Although a full system replacement can mean a substantial capital investment, it’s often well worth the cost in the long run, since it can provide the opportunity to upgrade systems to newer, more efficient, or more compact technologies. Full-system replacement may also be the best option for facilities looking to bring systems into compliance with environmental regulations, improve contaminant removal effectiveness, or for those looking to increase capacity.
Refurbishment
Sometimes, aging equipment can be refreshed through a process known as refurbishment. A lower-cost alternative to a full-system replacement, refurbishment is essentially a comprehensive rebuild that includes disassembly of the equipment, repair or replacement of worn or damaged parts, and reassembly. The refurbishment process may be done on- or off-site, and may include some level of redesign or upgrades to controls or other components. Refurbishment can be a good choice for facilities looking to get more years out of their existing equipment, as well as those wanting to minimize downtime, since it can take less time than a full replacement.
Retrofitting
Retrofitting is the practice of augmenting an existing piece of equipment by adding a new component that was not part of the original design. Sometimes done as part of a larger refurbishment project, retrofits can help to meet various goals, like protecting existing equipment from excess wear, improving efficiency, increasing capacity, bringing wastewater or process water in line with changing compliance standards, and of course, generating cost savings.
A retrofit may be as simple as replacing existing pipes with those made of materials that are more resistant to corrosion, while others are more complex, such as adding new pre-treatment equipment to protect downstream systems. Another popular retrofit project is adding a new control system to existing equipment. Since modern control systems provide enhanced data collection and analytics over legacy controls, they can greatly improve a facility’s ability to anticipate and troubleshoot issues, which can reduce unplanned downtime. Controller retrofits can also help facilities to centralize controls for multiple pieces of equipment, automate certain processes, or optimize system performance, all of which can generate significant cost savings on operations costs.
How can SAMCO help?
SAMCO has over 40 years of experience engineering, installing, and maintaining process separation and wastewater treatment technologies. Our service offerings include comprehensive engineering, design, fabrication, and installation services to help you achieve a custom solution for any application—whether it’s building a completely new system or upgrading an existing one. Or, if you’re looking to maintain existing systems, or just meet a temporary challenge, we’ve got you covered as well. Our range of ongoing support services include cost-effective remote operation and monitoring, offsite IX resin regeneration, equipment rentals to ensure reliable high performance with minimal downtime. Plus, SAMCO supplies a range of spare parts and consumables out of its Freeport warehouse space at our location in Buffalo, New York. With over 120,000 square feet of space, SAMCO stocks critical parts to help you to overcome challenges like long lead times for overseas shipping, as well as constraints on storage space at your own site.
Contact us here to set up a consultation with an engineer or request a quote for our support and maintenance services. We can assist you in developing a cost-effective maintenance plan to maximize uptime, and extend the life of your equipment.