was appointed to design, supply and commission the process instrumentation used at the Perth Seawater desalination plant.
The developer worked closely with European company Degrémont, a specialist in the design of water treatment and desalination plants, to lay down the project’s groundwork.
Under the terms of the $780,000 contract, Endress+Hauser supplied the plant with an array of flow, pressure, level and temperature devices. The units would provide salinity, conductivity, residual chlorine and turbidity readings.
The solution provider installed two sets of each instrument running in parallel. This would guarantee the water quality even if one instrument failed.
The company says the project threw up a host of unique challenges over the course of the implementation stage. For instance, the electromagnetic flowmeters (magmeters) were affected by eddy currents flowing through the water in the glass reinforced plastic (GRP) inlet pipes. These were caused by the electromagnetic interference from the huge pumps.
Magmeters require a stable magnetic field without outside interference in order to operate normally. Furthermore, GRP pipes cannot be easily earthed and steel pipes would be corroded by the salt water. The manufacturer installed massive, steel earth rings between the flanges which provided solid grounding and eliminated the electromagnetic interference.
According to the developer, another issue emerged when the contractors opted to do the instrument commissioning and troubleshooting with a proprietary software technology.This methodology did not work well because the device drivers did not incorporate all of the instrument vendor functionality.
The contractors switched to the company’s Field device technology/device type manager (FDT/DTM) system which was embedded in its Fieldcare commissioning and troubleshooting software management tool. The smooth commissioning stage convinced the contractors to incorporate Endress+Hauser’s Web-base Asset Management technology.