Our client, a major plumbing products manufacturer, is committed to innovating to improve lives and reduce its environmental footprint. Concerned by health and environmental challenges in communities without safe sanitation, our client identified the need for a self-contained wastewater treatment system that would provide sanitation without plumbing infrastructure.
To develop this product, our client needed to integrate into their design water quality sensors with remote monitoring capabilities. These sensors had to offer near-real-time water quality monitoring to
- trigger process-control adjustments for wastewater treatment, and
- assess and validate the quality of treated water to allow for recycling/reuse.
Determining Feasibility and Cost-Effectiveness of Sensors
Our client needed to understand state-of-the-art, field-grade sensors for wastewater monitoring. The sensors would monitor targets that included nutrients, dissolved oxygen, suspended solids, and organic loading. We identified and characterized
- types of sensors used to monitor and control wastewater treatment processes,
- underlying technologies used in these sensors and the advantages and disadvantages of each,
- major manufacturers serving this industry, and
- cost ranges for specific sensors and integrated sensor systems.
Using our insights, our client determined the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of integrating existing sensors into their wastewater system, and analyzed the cost-benefit of using state-of-the-art sensors versus developing new technology.
