Successful handover new automation Noorderzijlvest waste water treatment plants

In early 2017, Batenburg IAS and Beenen were contracted to replace the process automation at three waste water treatment plants of the Noorderzijlvest Water Board. The commission involved the replacement of the control systems at the Eelde, Uithuizermeeden and Delfzijl waste water treatment plants. These projects have now been completed and successfully handed over. The new control systems were realised with ABB System 800xA in combination with the BasicObjectLib recently developed by Batenburg IAS. The waste water treatment plants can now also be operated from a central location.

Most of the equipment at the Eelde, Uithuizermeeden and Delfzijl waste water treatment plants dated from the 1990s, and was both technically and economically obsolete. This meant that these systems no longer met the most recent functional and technical requirements. This led to risks affecting the functionality, reliability and availability. In addition, the information required for cost-effective operations had changed through the years. This meant the systems needed to be updated.

As such, Noorderzijlvest Water Board began a tendering process in 2016 for the replacement of the process automation at the waste water treatment plants. Beenen and Batenburg IAS, both part of Batenburg Techniek, submitted a joint bid. What made this tender special was that it was the first time the BVP method was applied to process automation in the Netherlands. With the BVP method, the tendering process considers not just price, but also quality. After successfully completing the selection phase and the detailed design phase, the contract was awarded to Beenen and Batenburg IAS in early 2017.

Cost savings thanks to new object library developed by Batenburg IAS

This project was unusual because the team of software engineers at Batenburg IAS decided to construct a completely new library with basic objects. Batenburg IAS's experience and expertise was put to good use in designing these objects, which resulted in an effective library (the Batenburg IAS Basic Object Library), which has several major benefits compared to other libraries. For example, this library uses much less memory, which means the end user could purchase cheaper PLC hardware. The licence costs for this library are also much lower. This allowed the end user to make major cost savings. The library also incorporates the latest graphics technology. Much use is made of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and the High Performance Graphics standard is also supported.

The first plant to be successfully renovated was the Uithuizermeeden waste water treatment plant. The control system for this plant was successfully commissioned at the end of 2017. The Delfzijl waste water treatment plant was subsequently completed in early 2018, followed by the Eelde waste water treatment plant. This meant the project could be successfully handed over in June 2018.