Although Vietnam enjoys considerable groundwater resources, uneven rainfall distribution and other factors have in the past resulted in constant shortages of drinking water. To counteract this, the Vietnamese company SWIC got together with Siemens and the Germany-based Passavant Energy & Environment (PE&E) to deliver the Thu Duc III water purification plant in Linh Trung Ward, Vietnam. The plant has a throughput capacity of up to 300 000 cubic metres a day and can purify water from the Dong Nai river to drinking water quality, supplying up to 600 000 local homes in Ho Chih Minh City about 22 kilometres away.
Reliable, economical and cost-efficient
Key challenges for the plant are to ensure the lowest possible energy consumption, short amortisation periods and high availability. This is why PE&E is relying on the solutions and services offered by Siemens for both commissioning and integrated drive systems (IDS). Six Sinamics Perfect Harmony medium-voltage inverters and six Simotics high-voltage motors of the H-compact Plus 1RQ4 series are used for Passavant’s patented pump process, which is based on the Turbo LME principle. Used in groundwater and surface water treatment in order to obtain drinking water, the Turbo LME principle is based on a combination of the turbo-flocculation process with the lamella separator with integrated thickener-rake unit.
It is important that the drives continue to run reliably, even in the event of a fault. “We needed a redundancy function. The pump that carries the water out of the plant and into the city must not be allowed to fail, as this would have a seriously detrimental impact on the water supply for the entire city,” explains Nguyen Duc Thanh, senior sales manager for large drives at Siemens. For Uwe Dechert, managing director of PE&E in Vietnam, the choice of partner was clear. “We decided on Siemens because the network must provide large parts of the population of Ho Chih Minh City with a reliable supply of drinking water. Consumption falls during the night before rising again in the morning. This means the drive system has to be extremely flexible if it is always to deliver the required volume of water into the system,” he explains.
Operation with the IDS-driven system is proving to be highly efficient, as Nguyen Duc Thanh acknowledges. “At present the pump is running at 80 to 85% of the nominal flow rate. However, the energy consumption is only 50 to 55% of the rated output. If the flow rate is reduced by just 20% therefore, that reduces energy consumption by 50%. This saves the customer a lot of energy when operating the plant,” he concludes.
For more information contact Jennifer Naidoo, Siemens Digital Factory and Process Industries and Drives, +27 (0)11 652 2795, [email protected], www.siemens.co.za
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