Water treatment monitoring system
DCFirst Claim
1. In a treatment facility adapted for use with water wherein pollutants are removed from the water and wherein water exiting from the facility has various acceptable and predetermined effluent quality parameters;
- said facility including a plurality of operational sensors for operably determining process water quality conditions while the water is in the facility;
the improvement comprising;
a) a monitoring computer at a site remote from said facility and including software to receive data from said sensors, analyze the water quality conditions inputted by said sensors and predict effluent water quality and process upsets;
said monitoring computer further including an artificial neural network module to determine solutions to actual and potential water quality and process upsets; and
b) an internet interface operably connecting said computer to said sensors for transferring said process water quality conditions from said sensors to said monitoring computer and transferring said solutions form said monitoring computer to said facility.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A computer system linked by the internet to various remote waste water treatment facilities. The system receives real-time data from the facilities and analyzing the data to determine likely operational upsets and future effluent water quality. The computer system sends signals to a hierarchy of parties depending on the severity of predicted upsets problems and events. The computer also provides a probability distribution of such upsets and water quality and recommendations as how to adjust facility operating parameters to avoid or reduce the upsets to acceptable parameters and maintain effluent water quality parameters within preselected limits.
131 Citations
26 Claims
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1. In a treatment facility adapted for use with water wherein pollutants are removed from the water and wherein water exiting from the facility has various acceptable and predetermined effluent quality parameters;
- said facility including a plurality of operational sensors for operably determining process water quality conditions while the water is in the facility;
the improvement comprising;a) a monitoring computer at a site remote from said facility and including software to receive data from said sensors, analyze the water quality conditions inputted by said sensors and predict effluent water quality and process upsets;
said monitoring computer further including an artificial neural network module to determine solutions to actual and potential water quality and process upsets; and
b) an internet interface operably connecting said computer to said sensors for transferring said process water quality conditions from said sensors to said monitoring computer and transferring said solutions form said monitoring computer to said facility. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 25, 26)
- said facility including a plurality of operational sensors for operably determining process water quality conditions while the water is in the facility;
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13. A process for real-time monitoring of a water treatment facility comprising the steps of:
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a) collecting operational data from said facility;
b) providing a monitoring computer at a remote location from the facility;
c) transferring said data over internet communication lines to the computer;
d) providing software with the monitoring computer to operably analyze the data and to detect ongoing and predict future waste water treatment process failure events; and
e) sending an alarm signal from the monitoring computer to the facility to provide warning of the process failure events. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16)
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17. A process for real-time monitoring of a water treatment facility comprising the steps of:
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a) collecting operational data from said facility;
b) providing a monitoring computer at a remote location from the facility;
c) transferring said data over communication lines to the computer;
d) providing software with the computer to operably analyze the data and predict waste water treatment process upsets and process failure events; and
e) sending a hierarchal alarm signal from the computer to the facility to provide warning of the process upsets and failure events;
said alarm signal having a first hierarchy alarm that is sent to a first party in response to an upset or event having a lower degree of severity and a second hierarchy alarm that is sent to a second party in response to an upset or event having a higher severity. - View Dependent Claims (18)
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19. A water treatment system including:
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a) a plurality of waste water treatment facilities;
at least some of said facilities being located at sites remote from one another;
b) each of said facilities having a sensor group having multiple sensors, each of said sensors providing real-time data of parameters associated with operation of each facility and surrounding environment thereof;
c) a monitoring computer located at a site remote from at least some of said facilities;
d) a computer and communication interface adapted respectively for each facility to operably continuously connect with the internet;
e) each of said communication interfaces including encryption software such that transmissions passing through the interfaces into the internet are encrypted for security purposes;
f) said monitoring computer including operational software having an artificial neural network module that receives said data from each facility;
said operational software evaluating the received data to determine quality of the received data and using the received data from each facility to predict future operational conditions within the facility;
g) said operational software having a pattern recognition module that cooperates with the neural artificial network module to locate common patterns with historic operation and predict process failure events at each facility;
h) said operational software having a statistical module cooperating with said artificial neural network module to evaluate the data from each of the facilities and predicted future operational conditions of each facility to calculate a probability distribution of parameters that are to be expected in future operational conditions, including effluent water conditions;
i) said computer software including a search module that reviews the probability distributions and compares such to thresholds to see if such thresholds are likely to be exceeded;
said search module generating an alarm signal each time a threshold is predicted to be exceeded and with respect to each predicted process failure event; and
j) a communication link between said computer and parties associated with each of said facilities;
said computer transmitting each alarm signal to a respective party so as to warn the party that either a threshold is likely to be exceeded or a process failure event is likely to occur. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23)
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24. A process for real-time monitoring of a water treatment facility comprising the steps of:
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a) collecting operational data from said facility;
b) providing a monitoring computer at a remote location from the facility;
c) transferring said data over internet communication lines to the computer;
d) providing software with the computer to operably analyze the data, to determine where the facility operation is not being optimized and to develop steps to optimize operation of the facility; and
e) sending a message from the computer to the facility personnel providing steps to take to optimize operation of the facility.
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Specification