Plant-wide control: dream, necessity or reality?

Instrumentation, control and automation (ICA) are key technologies in modern water and wastewater systems. Despite the. variability of the influents the system outputs have to be satisfactory. Economic realities and new water directives encourage the application of ICA to make a maximum use of plant and other storage capacities. The final goal of protecting the environmental resources necessitates an integrated view of several interdependent systems, including the collection, transport and treatment processes. In this integrating development ICA will be a decisive technology.