A drinking water treatment plant simulator using real-time plant data for enhanced operator training and model evaluation

Abstract

Waterspot is a plant-wide drinking water treatment simulator that has been developed in a 3 year research project. The incorporation of real-time and historical data of on-line water quality measurements, flow measurements, process data and water quality laboratory measurements in the simulator improves the acceptance of model output by technologists, ensures a more realistic training of operators and shows the potential of detecting deviations from the expected water quality and control of the plant. The optimal position of the simulator in the automation architecture was found to be on the process information management system (PIMS) network.