Unveiling the "Yizhuang Smart" energy saving rate of "Smart Water Plant" to catch up with the industry benchmark Singapore

More than half of the industrial water used in the whole district is reclaimed water, the water consumption of 10,000 yuan of GDP is only one-fourth of the city, and the new industrial projects do not use new water... The series of water recycling achievements achieved by the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone (hereinafter referred to as the Economic and Technological Development Zone, also known as Beijing Yizhuang) are inseparable from the "second source" of reclaimed water. In Beijing's Economic Development Zone, an internationally leading intelligent water-making prototype mother factory broke out of the cocoon. How is the smart water prototype mother plant different from a conventional reclaimed water plant? How to achieve rapid replication construction? How to further improve the level of water recycling? Recently, the reporter took these questions and walked into the intelligent water prototype mother factory located on the West Ring South Road in Beijing's Economic Development Zone to explore.

One click second becomes unmanned factory

Walking into the intelligent water-making prototype mother factory, the sewage treatment equipment more than two meters high is lined up to form a recycled aquatic product line. The sound of the field equipment running continuously monitors the data on the data meter, but the equipment operator is not seen.

When I came to the central control room, I found the mystery. Two engineers stared at the centralized control platform, at this time a group of equipment has been working continuously for 33 hours, just in time to catch up with the start-stop operation, only to see an operator move the mouse to open the corresponding interface, click the start-stop button, showing the 5 switch icons on the large screen in turn from green to red, from red to green. "As a 24-hour recycled water plant, production equipment needs to rotate and stop to 'rest' to ensure production quality." The person in charge of the factory said that such a start-stop operation is a routine operation, and the previous start-stop operation was not as simple as a one-button operation.

The reporter saw on the display screen that each switch icon corresponds to each control valve or switch on the field equipment, and multiple control valves and switches cooperate with each other and act in an orderly manner, completing multiple programs such as forward punching, running, and backwashing, so as to achieve a start and stop. In the past, the start-stop operation required multiple operators to go to the scene, hold the walkie-talkie non-stop communication, manually open or close the control valve and switch, and work together to complete the operation time of more than 20 minutes. Since the completion of the trial operation of the intelligent water prototype mother factory in late 2020, the control valves and switches on each device have been automated, and through the industrial Internet technology, concentrated to the control platform, the use of centralized control systems, a click can complete the previous team of people, more than 20 minutes of operation.

Not only the start-stop operation, the centralized control platform is like the operation panel of the entire factory, and all the routine operations of the factory, such as dosing and starting, can be completed automatically through the platform with one click. "The entire factory used to require more than 20 staff to record data and operations on the spot, but now only 5 people need to work shifts in the central control room to keep an eye on and operate, and the factory can operate 24 hours a day." The person in charge of the factory said that the entire factory has become an unmanned factory and a black light factory, and virtual reality technology will be applied in the future, and equipment maintenance and maintenance work other than conventional operations will also be intelligent.

Sensing platforms make production more refined

Follow the staff into the interior of the intelligent water prototype mother factory and come to the production-level pilot test and control platform, which looks no different from other production equipment, but the function is extremely critical.

"With the change of climate, the addition of new agents, and the improvement of processes, the quality of water treatment will fluctuate, and frequent experiments are needed to collect data to guide the adjustment of production equipment and ensure the quality of water production." The person in charge of the factory pointed to the two slightly low equipment next to it, which was previously used as a small test and pilot platform, which can only be independently tested offline, and the innovatively developed production-level pilot test and control platform can be tested experimentally in the production process.

The production-level pilot measurement and control platform consists of four sets of specially customized reverse osmosis modules and a supporting multi-sensor system, nested in the middle of the entire production equipment. The two rows of square white meters on the side of the platform are particularly conspicuous, and the dial displays real-time data of conventional values such as conductivity, turbidity, pressure, flow rate, and ph-value transmitted back by the sensors inside the device. According to Cui Yong, sensor monitoring data was previously only installed in the inlet and outlet of the production equipment, and now there is the addition of the production-level pilot measurement and control platform, which forms a multi-sensor system, according to these real-time backhaul data, to guide all production equipment to adjust parameters to optimize water quality.

In the monitoring center known as the "brain" of the factory, through the huge electronic kanban board, you can not only see the three-dimensional scene of the entire water plant, but also see the real-time data such as conductivity, turbidity, pressure, flow rate, and pH value transmitted back by the sensor, as well as the operating status and chart analysis of capacity load, water inlet, and water production.

"Dingdong..." A mobile phone SMS prompt sound, the monitoring center staff immediately viewed, according to the information display data, the staff in the monitoring center operating system corresponding position input values, optimize the adjustment of production parameters. Originally, the mobile phone was bound to the big data system of the monitoring center, and the equipment production monitoring data was transferred to the big data system, and after analysis, the information was pushed to the mobile phone for the staff to adjust. In the past, equipment adjustment was carried out by the staff on-site transcription of instrument data and analysis of operating conditions, but now the big data system collects and analyzes the data, guides the staff to make precise adjustments, and changes the adjustment work from experience to data, improving the refinement and water quality.

Among them, backwashing is a key step in the reclaimed water plant, and the equipment works for a period of time to flush the filtration system to ensure the quality of treatment. Previously, manual data viewing was required to guide backwashing, or to set up a flush once per fixed time stage via the control system. Now, as the sensor transmits real-time monitoring data, the filtration system automatically backwashes when it needs to be flushed, greatly improving production efficiency.

The digital factory is being built

With sensors all over production equipment, how can the big data collected be used? In response to the reporter's question, the person in charge of the factory explained, "The big data system is the factory brain, and the future will realize intelligent and automated production, and all the data of the production operation in the factory, including the operation data of the staff, is collected in the big data system for system analysis and grasping, forming an algorithm for digital control of the operation of the factory, and the digital twin factory is being built and formed." The big data accumulated by these parameters provides support for the quality of water produced by the new replication reclaimed water plant. "

The so-called digital twin factory is the simulated digital factory in the big data system, which is completely consistent with the factory in reality, and the most direct embodiment is that the production operation data predicted by big data is completely consistent with the real-time monitoring data. In a big data system, the red value that represents the algorithm is rapidly approaching the green value that represents real-time monitoring.

When the data of the big data system accumulates to a certain extent, the algorithm is stable, and the predicted values are fully consistent with the monitoring values, the digital twin factory is built. In the intelligent water-making prototype mother factory, the manual mode of mobile phone push information and manual modification of parameters will become the past tense, and enter the intelligent and automated mode of the system automatically correcting the control equipment according to the changes in real-time monitoring data. The digital twin factory is also a key part of the prototype's parent factory, which will be copied and built together with the physical factory, giving the replication reclaimed water plant a smart brain.

With the improvement of the operational stability of the production-level pilot measurement and control platform, the design of the entire set of production equipment will be more intensive and reasonable, and modular, assembled equipment can be developed and designed, so that the reclaimed water treatment facilities can be transformed from engineering into products, and the reclaimed water plant that is quickly assembled and built will completely replicate the water quality and efficiency of the benchmark reclaimed water plant.

At present, the intelligent water prototype mother factory is still in the stage of continuous optimization and upgrading, but the production efficiency and energy saving effect have emerged. The data shows that efficiency has increased from 75% to 90%, reaching the industry-leading level. While efficiency increases, energy savings continue to increase. Today, the power savings have reached 15%-30%, and 1 ton of water can be produced with 1.33 kWh of electricity, which is lower than the energy consumption of singapore's nascent water plant, which was the lowest energy consumption in the industry.

With its innovation and excellent performance, the water plant has received a number of evaluations of technologies to fill the international gap in the review of experts from Tsinghua University, and has won the title of Beijing Intelligent Manufacturing Benchmark, and the ISO international standards involved in the formulation have been passed.

Such an intelligent water-making prototype mother factory will be copied and built in Yizhuang New City on a priority basis. It is expected that within this year, the construction of the Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base will be replicated to support the production of data storage, electronic chips and other companies, and at the same time, it will also be built in the integrated circuit equipment and material industrial park within the scope of Yizhuang New City, and the high-quality industrial recycled water will be used to support the high-quality development of the integrated circuit industry.

Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Li Jia

Editor/Tan Weiping