Water Industry Process Automation & Control

 

WIPAC Flow Forum

The WIPAC Flow Forum last took place on 20th November 2018 with the over-arching themes of the installation and maintenance of sensors, flow control and new technologies within flow monitoring.

 

In the first session the WIPAC Flow Forum concentrated on the installation and maintenance of sensors with the session kicking off with a presentation by Marc Swain of Severn Trent Water talking about the need for maintaining flumes and weirs and the procedures that Severn Trent have developed to make sure it is done. Second in the session was Craig Handford & Sepi Sepidah of Morrison Utilities who have been delivering Anglian Water's MCERTS base maintenance programme which despite its challenges has seen the company lead the industry in terms of MCERTS performance. Lastly in the first session the Flow Forum saw Steven French of Z-Tech Control Systems discuss the little things in instrumentation installation that make the difference between an asset lasting a handful of years and an instrument lasting its full asset life.

 

The second session saw Oliver Grievson, Executive Director of WIPAC and Technical Lead at Z-Tech Control systems discuss the challenges of flow and it's control in the next decade with the results of EDM and the future FFT programme coming up which will put stress in the delivery of flow solutions. The next two presentations by Claire Fenwick of nuron and Lorenzo Pompa of Anglian Water saw the work the technologies that are being developed and the technologies that are being used to control the wastewater network from fibre optic cable in the gravity sewer to the use of flow and pressure monitoring in the pumped sewer. A fascinating direction that the water industry is heading in.

 

The last session saw the technological developments in flow monitoring. The session was kicked off by Rob Stevens of RS Hydro, who were sponsoring the flow forum, talk about the developments in time of flight flow measurement. The session continued with Dr Andy Nichols of the University of Sheffield talk about free surface flow measurements and the research that is being done that will help the water industry measure flow within the sewer. The session, and the day, finished with Greg Wainhouse of Burkert Fluid Control Systems talking about their development of the Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) technology that has a huge potential across the water industry.

 

The WIPAC Flow Forum will return at WWEM 2020 on the 11th  November 2020.