Operations at the world's largest membrane filtration treatment plant—designed by Moroni Engineering (Denver, Colo.) and recently built in Kenosha, Wis.—function under the watchful eye of Mauell Corp.'s (Dillsburg, Pa.) mosaic technology.

Three mosaic mapboards continuously monitor status, flow, and filtration of up to 18 million gallons of water per day for Kenosha Water Utility's system. The plant draws and processes water from Lake Michigan, supplying the entire city and augmenting an existing conventional treatment plant. The system uses a new membrane filtration system from Memtec America Corp. (Timonium, Md.) along with a conventional filtration system.

To coordinate these tasks, the first mapboard displays flow rates and status of the filtration systems in the treatment plant. The second mapboard depicts the plant's water distribution system. Information on flow rates, pump status, pressures, and reservoir levels are shown on the boards. This helps operators respond quickly to system changes, which allows the overall system to run at the safest and highest efficiency levels.

Mauell's mosaic technology enhances the new plant's traditional desktop CRTs and human-machine interfaces with a big-picture overview. This perspective is usually obscured by CRTs' screen-size limits.

The mapboards' display panel indicators are driven by Mauell's I/O controllers, which interface with Allen-Bradley PLCs from Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, Wis.). LEDs and digital readouts integrated into the panels indicate "on," "standby," and "failure" of pumps, as well as provide water pressure readings. These indicators allow operators to anticipate peak and off-peak water usage needs and monitor the plant's conventional sand and anthracite filtration activity.

A Mauell operator console—specially designed and built to house the third mapboard—completes the plant's system. This console monitors the membrane filtration process, while providing a cost- and space-effective area to monitor this special segment of the process. LEDs also indicate the status of each filter, providing information on incoming and outgoing flows, the status of compressors and heaters, and a plant alarm.

The mapboards consist of several hundred square mosaic tiles that snap into place on a metal grid surface to form a system graphic. This means users can easily update the boards to reflect changes in the field—without the loss of visual integrity—by simply removing tiles and/or indicators from the grid and snapping new ones in place.

In addition, the plant's membrane filtration system uses an air backwash system that filters above 0.2 microns, and includes a built-in integrity test for the entire system. Construction of the facility also included installation of 16 membrane filtration units for initial operation. System design includes provisions for future expansion of the membrane system, both in the plant and on the mosaic mapboard. The filtration equipment, scheduled for factory test in June 2000, will have the capacity to add 24 more filtration units.

For more information, visit www.mauell-us.com, www.rockwellautomation.com, or www.controleng.com/freeinfo.