Pearce, A.1, McEnroe, P.2 and Yates, A.2
(free)This paper gives information on United Utilities Mersey Valley Processing Centre, Advanced
Control System covering:
• A summary of the capital investment projects and the Integrated Operations & Maintenance
(IO&M) project established to deliver operating optimisation
• A detailed description of the technical solution developed within the IO&M project
• A summary of the operating cost savings expected from IO&M
The methodology used in the IO&M project focuses on business process modelling to deliver the
work flow framework, with technology specification and change management ensuring that the
solutions are successfully implemented. The technical solution specifies the plant control system
and the interfaces with the corporate business to achieve the project goals. The aim is to achieve
the most cost effective solution to deliver the ability to continuously optimise both the production
process and the activities performed in operating and maintaining the plant.
A Distributed Control System (DCS) operating over a Virtual Private Network (VPN) via ADSL
provides:
• Full visibility of the entire sludge system and the six donor sites providing the plant process
flow
• Instantaneous cost-to-treat data to drive optimisation
• Control System user configurable reports and diagnostics to identify poor asset performance
• Automatic work order compilation and performance reporting to corporate systems
KEY WORDS
Advanced Control System, Control, Distributed Control System (DCS), Integrated Operations of
Maintenance, Optimisation, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), Reliability Centred
Maintenance (RCM), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
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