Preventing unconsented spills from wastewater networks
Preventing blockages
Over 30,000 Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) help to safely manage the UK’s wastewater network, supported by weather and systems monitoring. However, heavy rainfall, unforeseen system overloads and blockages causing undiluted overflows can lead to unconsented spillages and financial penalties for your utilities business.
How the Siemens solutions work within your network
Sewer Blockage Predictor: Predicting blockages before they happen
Combined Sewer Overflow analysis, a Siemens MindSphere solution, evaluates CSO efficiency in real time to provide a better understanding of the system’s performance. This helps to identify if a sewer is blocked or is not operating correctly or if a CSO is soon to have operational issues. The analytics are embedded within a PC-based application, which notifies users of an issue in advance of the incident.
How can MindSphere help you?
Unlike conventional sewer monitoring that can only provide diagnostic, MindSphere’s near real time insights are capable of highlighting underperformance and enable improved targeting of sewer service operations.
The system highlights all deviations from normal operation in the network of CSOs. The early detection method arms you with the knowledge of the issue and gives you time to attempt to resolve it.
It can also:
Reduce operational costs, allowing technicians to work on sites where they’re actually needed
Provide advanced warning of blockages in sewer overflows, giving your business time to act
Reduce the number of CSO fails, resulting in fewer penalties and a lower environmental impact
Reduce false alarms to save your business time and money
Accurate pinpointing of blockages allows for faster removal and reduced network disruption
Reduced internal and external sewer flooding and malfunction
Improve investment decision-making
Our MindSphere solutions provide quality, efficiency and resilience and will save water and maximise revenue at the same time
What are CSOs?
Combined sewer overflows are a vital relief mechanism for combined sewers during heavy rainfall to ease pressure on the water treatment network. When rainwater and sewage rise inside the sewer, instead of overloading the network, CSOs allow it to enter a separate pipe which runs off the main sewer and prevents flooding. During extreme weather and with approval from the Environment Agency, the weir within the CSO system will allow diluted wastewater to overflow into nearby watercourses, when required, to reduce the load to be processed at the treatment works.What happens if a CSO fails?
If overflow occurs under non-compliant conditions, due to a malfunction in the CSO such as a blockage or a leak, steep financial penalties could be incurred. If a blockage prevents a discharge, the additional pressure and flow could overload the network downstream and water treatment works causing considerable damage and further issues.
Siemens Combined Sewer Overflow analysis from MindSphere won’t just alert you to problems within the system, it will predict them before they even happen.
What is MindSphere?
Siemens’ MindSphere, a cloud-based, open Internet of Things (IoT) operating system, enables the water industry to link their machines and physical infrastructure to the digital world easily, quickly and economically and is hosted in secure data centres of qualified cloud providers worldwide – AWS, Azure and others.
The embedded security framework aligns with the most stringent industry standards (e.g. IEC62443/ISO27001/NCSC guidelines) and governmental recommendations.
Harnessing data from virtually any number of connected intelligent devices, enterprise systems and federated sources allows for analysis of real-time operational data throughout the water distribution network. This analysis then leads to optimised processes, resource and productivity gains, the development of new business models and the reduction of operations and maintenance costs. Companies leveraging MindSphere boost performance, sharpen their competitive advantage and realise much more profitability.