Major water-treatment plant in Türkiye unlocks easier access and greater efficiencies with PlantPAx DCS

The constant evolution of the world’s population – in terms of growth, density, and societal migration – means that governments and private utility companies face an uphill battle to ensure widespread access to essential services, such as water, gas, and electricity.

The optimal supply of potable water is of particular concern, as the effects of this societal evolution are compounded not just by the world’s finite natural freshwater supply, but also the growing effects of climate change.

The challenge utility providers face is twofold. First, investment is required for greenfield sites, to help ensure new population centers are well served; and second, established water infrastructure requires modernization to help ensure the highest possible levels of efficiency for existing population centers.

Greenfield facilities may appear to have an advantage regarding the deployment of newer digital solutions, in that they can start from a blank slate. But, as Gema Endüstriyel Kontrol, a silver-level system integrator in the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork™ showed in a recent application in Türkiye, existing sites can just as easily be modernized – quickly, effectively and with zero downtime.

This water treatment plant is in Kocaeli, one of the biggest industrial cities in Türkiye, 100 kilometers southeast of Istanbul. Operated by İzmit Su A.Ş. (İSAŞ), an autonomous organization that works with the city, the modernization project entailed the replacement of a 25-year-old control system. Although it was still working within its operational parameters, the plant’s operators faced issues relating to obsolescence, spares availability, and potential downtime.

Mehmet Küçüksari, group information technology manager at İSAŞ, explains: “We still had a reasonable level of spares available, but these were diminishing, and we knew an upgrade was inevitable. The existing system was showing its age in other aspects too. It was not as user friendly as newer solutions, with even simple I/O problems being hard to remedy. As a result, we started the search for a contemporary distributed control system (DCS), which led us to Gema Endüstriyel Kontrol.”

“We had an existing relationship with İSAŞ,” Gökhan Yildiz, Technical Manager at Gema Endüstriyel Kontrol tells us, “having undertaken several important pumping-station projects with them. So, there was already a good level of trust.”

The resulting project entailed the deployment of a modern, fully redundant process control solution, comprising the Rockwell Automation PlantPAx DCS, process controllers, 2,500 I/O, and multiple remote telemetry units (RTU).

Yildiz continues: “Downtime was not an option on this project. The plant serves 1.6 million customers in the province. An interruption to the water supply was unthinkable. So, to address this need, we undertook significant pre-engineering followed by parallel commissioning.

“Software for all the process controllers was created using Studio 5000 Application Code Manager (ACM) then all the necessary logic was defined. Once this had been tested and verified offline, we undertook factory acceptance testing (FAT) and site acceptance testing (SAT) simultaneously during commissioning. As expected, the switchover from the old system to the new system went without a hitch and, more importantly, without any downtime.”