Localising filter membrane breakage

Reverse osmo­sis and nano-fil­tra­tion are used in many areas, from drink­ing water treat­ment to desali­na­tion of sea­wa­ter all the way to waste-water treat­ment. The fil­ter mem­branes used for this pur­pose per­form mul­ti­ple tasks simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, such as the removal of micro-organ­isms, par­ti­cles, salts and oth­er con­stituents. Con­se­quent­ly, safe mon­i­tor­ing of their func­tion is essen­tial to ensure reli­able oper­a­tion. To sup­port high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of these types of sys­tems, Bürk­ert Flu­id Con­trol Sys­tems has devel­oped a flex­i­ble and scal­able mem­brane integri­ty test sys­tem. It auto­mat­i­cal­ly checks all qual­i­ty-rel­e­vant water data and there­by the prop­er func­tion of the fil­ter membranes.
For this pur­pose, water sam­ples are tak­en from the indi­vid­ual pres­sure tubes via valves in the auto­mat­ic sam­pling sys­tem and fed to the sen­sors. This allows para­me­ters such as con­duc­tiv­i­ty, tur­bid­i­ty, pH val­ue, sul­phate and chlo­rine con­tent to be mea­sured. If pre-set lim­it val­ues are exceed­ed, an alarm is trig­gered. As a result, it is eas­i­er for an oper­a­tor to keep an eye on mul­ti­ple dis­trib­uted sys­tems, such as those found in water treat­ment plants. Since the sys­tem is based on the type 8640 valve island, it is eas­i­ly scal­able and there­fore suit­able for small to very large plants, for exam­ple, where up to 200 pres­sure tubes are mon­i­tored in a con­trol cabinet.

Trend analysis enables preventive maintenance

To ensure high­ly pro­duc­tive water treat­ment, this sys­tem uses trend analy­sis to enable ear­ly detec­tion of mem­brane break­age. This trend report can be sep­a­rate­ly cre­at­ed for every pres­sure tube and there­fore pro­vides infor­ma­tion about the mem­brane integri­ty of the indi­vid­ual pres­sure tubes. In this way, prob­lems can be quick­ly localised, and unsched­uled pro­duc­tion inter­rup­tions avoid­ed. Thanks to pre-assem­bled con­trol cab­i­nets and defined inter­faces, the Online Analy­sis Sys­tem can be quick­ly installed. For incor­po­ra­tion into the plant-spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem, the Profibus-DP, Profinet, CANopen, Device Net, Field­bus AS Inter­face and Inter­bus in ter­faces are avail­able. The mem­brane integri­ty test sys­tem is avail­able in two ver­sions – a plug-and-play ver­sion com­pris­ing a stand-alone device and a con­trol mod­ule, and a hard­ware bun­dle for inte­gra­tion by the user in exist­ing systems.