Page 30 - trends in automation 1.2013

The Cathedral of the Resurrection

of Christ

(also known as the Church of

the Saviour on Spilled Blood) on

the Griboyedov Canal in St. Petersburg.

Water in St. Petersburg:

Crayfish help with

quality monitoring

T

he most northerly city in the

world with a population of

a million or more has resolved

to implement a programme

to increase the energy efficiency of the

drinking water supply for its southern

areas. That is why St. Petersburg,

the favourite city of the Russian tsars,

has invested 2.6 billion roubles (around

65 million euros) over a period of

three years. In addition to modernising

34 pumping stations, Vodokanal,

Saint Petersburg’s water utility, has set

itself the goal of reducing power

consumption for drinking water supply

by more than a third.

Energy-efficient pneumatics

Until now, electric drives were the

first choice for Russia’s water treatment

plants – for opening and closing the

inlets and outlets of sand-bed filters or

in pumping stations. In St. Petersburg,

the use of only electric drives would have

meant an installed load of 75 kW. The

plant could not have supplied this with-

out an additional power supply. “In order

to achieve the energy-saving targets

which we had set ourselves, we needed

to find new solutions,” explains Maksim

Perschin, manager of the plant’s block

K-6 at Vodokanal.

“During a visit to a trade fair, Vodokanal

engineers became aware of the energy-

efficient solutions with pneumatic actu-

ators offered by Festo,” reports Dr. Ivan

Znamensky, Festo sales manager for the

European part of Russia. A pneumatic

Saving energy

with pneumatics

Drinking water treatment in Russia

Right from the time of its foundation

over 300 years ago,

Saint Petersburg has set

standards in architecture and city planning.

Now the former capital of the largest country

in the world is playing a leading role in the

field of drinking water treatment. Pneumatic

automation technology from Festo is helping

by providing energy-efficient solutions for

new treatment plants.

Crayfish sensors

St. Petersburg, the metropolis on the banks of the Newa, is together with

Moscow a pioneer in the modernisation of the Russian water industry. Currently

92 per cent of the wastewater generated in the city is purified. It is planned

to increase this to 100 per cent by 2020. Even today, Vodokanal no longer uses

chlorine in its new plants but has replaced this with ozone. Crayfish are also used

to help monitor for toxic substances. These creatures react to toxic substances

by displaying a faster heartbeat, which is measured using sensors. This heart-

beat data is relayed to the control room of the local water utility company.