Challenge

Siemens Water Technologies, formerly USFilter, originally bid on this project but lost to a competitor on price.  Eventually, Siemens acquired the account through acquisition.  The system was plagued with problems, including:

• No redundancy when the RO required cleaning
• No redundancy if a problem developed with the RO resulting in outages
• No UVs or carbon filters to address fluctuating TOC levels from the municipal supply of which one utilizes a river as a source.  This resulted in TOC excursions/outages.
• No RO storage tank resulting on an immediate impact to their process without warning
• Very limited instrumentation for proper trouble shooting when problems developed could not be performed in a timely fashion

Solution

The customer wanted to upgrade and improve the water quality and reliability in the operation.  Also, the customer's landlord required them to remove the trailer from the current location due to image.

Siemens personnel visited the site to address problems and provide basic recommendations for system upgrades.  A proposal was provided to give the customer the desired permanent installed system to meet the enhanced water quality requirements and reliability issues.  Unfortunately, this cost exceeded their budget requirements.  The outsourcing team, working with their standard assets (to reduce the monthly cost due to the ability to reuse of the equipment) reverted back to a trailer-mounted system to reduce the installation cost.  The system was enhanced in reliability by including:

Three 33% ROs (note that normal operation is about 70% of design flow)
One RO permeate storage tank (provided surge capacity and hydraulic stability)
Incorporated several UVs (for TOC reduction)
Incorporated instrumentation and automation to address chloramine variations in the feed, monitoring of the TOC, chloramine and silica at various points (allowed operations to be proactive to developing problems/incoming water fluctuations)

Results

These system modifications have allowed the system to be enhanced from a reliability and quality issue while still keeping the monthly operation costs to within their budget.

In addition to the above, operations was enhanced utilizing the Siemens uniform semiconductor operations program by:

• Trained operations for semiconductor applications
• Incorporating a greater degree of discipline for the day-to-day operations and maintenance
• Added Siemens Water Technologies management support
• The customer is pleased with the improved stability, reliability and water quality of the new system