In the 1970s, some people began to discuss the introduction of ICA technology (instrumentation, control and automation) into the field of sewage treatment. The iconic starting point was the International Water Association's first ICA Technical Conference, held in London in 1973, 50 years ago. Ten years ago, based on the development of information technology and smart city opportunities, China's water industry began to develop in the direction of wisdom.

In 2022, China held the first ICA International Water Association conference series, involving ICA in sewage treatment operation process control, intelligent control of drainage systems, soft sensors based on intelligent detection, ICA for resource recovery, ICA for greenhouse gas emission reduction, process control modeling, digital twin, artificial intelligence in sewage system detection and prediction application. And the monitoring and control of emerging pollutants.

Elements, objectives and scope of smart water

Europe and the United States home 50 years from instrumentation, control systems, automation, information to intelligent. Although China's ten years of development has the advantage of late development, it also has fast problems. The next step in the development of smart water should pay more attention to practical technology to make it produce benefits.

Smart water includes five aspects of the elements, two aspects of the goal, four aspects of the public category, the basis is information and intelligence.

Water not only has sewage treatment and drinking water supply, but also must ensure the safety of the water ecological environment, and implement the rational allocation and utilization of water resources. What do we need to do to achieve these two goals?

Water ecological environment security

The smart water platform provides a large framework from the perception layer, management layer to the intelligent application layer. It is necessary to establish a three-dimensional monitoring network for the basin, establish a smart water decision-making support system, and improve the water environment public information platform.

The general direction and framework are correct, but there are shortcomings, such as detection means and data acquisition. The total number of state control stations and provincial control stations in China is relatively sparse compared with the whole river basin. China is in the industrialization platform period, the pollution source is more than in the post-industrialization period of Europe and the United States. In this regard, China's breakthrough will be a small low-power sensor based on optoelectronics. High integration can reduce miniaturization, and miniaturization can reduce power consumption and pharmaceutical consumption, thereby reducing operating costs. At present, our research and development can use the kinetic energy of wind, solar, and even water waves to generate electricity to supply small low-power sensors. Now many monitoring stations after the completion of the operating cost pressure, need to be combined with less reagent or reagent free instruments and fixed-point stations and mobile inspection monitoring, which is possible to develop and hone the internal work in the future.

The basis of wisdom is the model, which is summarized and promoted to a mathematical level on the basis of hydrodynamic, water capacity and reaction process mechanism research. A lot of calculation in our country is to use foreign models and software, sewage is the ASM model, the pipeline is the SWMM model. We use these as a basis to develop theoretical models, empirical models, and AI models of artificial intelligence.

In terms of water ecological environment security, the internal connection between detection technology to obtain information and establish information is also a short board that we need to make up.

Rational allocation and utilization of water resources

Water circulation to establish the regional water environment of water sources, rainwater, reclaimed water quantity/water quality information database and life, industry, agriculture, ecological water quantity/water quality information database, the two information databases must be able to be worthy of, in order to make reasonable deployment.

Improve the water supply system of differentiated water, realize the utilization of recycled water nearby, and build the joint dispatching model and reasonable allocation system of water plants, pipe networks, pumping stations and storage tanks. In terms of water supply, research and development of new pollutant detection and removal technologies should be strengthened. For the mass water supply of residential users and industry, it is necessary to operate accurately to achieve energy saving and carbon reduction.

The transformation of sewage treatment plants into resource and energy centers

In the process of the development of sewage treatment plants in China, there are shortcomings of instrumentation and automation. European and American 

sewage treatment plants have few personnel and can be unattended at night, which requires the reliability of equipment and the stability of the system. Our 

equipment often has problems, it is difficult to automatic operation and automatic detection, we must avoid simple low-cost competition from the system to 

ensure quality.

The realization of intelligence and improved accuracy and predictability in sewage treatment requires the combination of theoretical models and AI technology. 

I hope that the sewage treatment plant can be partially or completely converted into a resource energy center. Carbon reduction can be achieved through 

energy conservation and consumption reduction, making up for indirect emissions and carbon separation of green energy, reducing oxidation, direct emissions 

through biological conversion into energy or resources. Many places have begun to practice.

Can the process technology achieve front-end carbon source separation and back-end resource recovery? In the separation process, the ultra-fine grid + 

membrane can divide the carbon at the front end into low-carbon sewage as much as possible, and then recover phosphorus by adsorption, and remove nitrogen 

by short-range or anaerobic ammonia oxidation technology. From the perspective of anaerobic, the carbon source trapped in the front can produce biogas for 

energy reuse, but according to the assessment of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, it is not economical to produce biogas below 100,000 

tons, and good carbon throttling at the front end cannot break through the bottleneck of full utilization of biogas at the back end.

If the high value carbon source can be utilized by strengthening hydrolysis, the shortage of food resources in China can be solved. The total amount of grain in 

2021 will be 850 million tons, of which 160 million tons will be imported. China's industrial carbon source food accounts for 16% (about 140 million tons). If the 

carbon source in sewage can be collected through hydrolysis into a useful industrial carbon source, it can be produced as an industrial raw material.

The bottleneck is the efficient hydrolysis of microbial populations. In the future, the bottleneck may be broken through synthetic biology, and the sewage 

treatment plant will be transformed into a resource center, which will reduce the pressure on the country to import food, and has strategic significance.

Instrumental and intelligent technology has a wide range of needs, such as the dosing system of a sewage treatment plant, which requires a combination of 

mechanism models, principle models, engineering models and AI, and complex processes require accurate control. In terms of development, the water industry 

should focus on achieving systematization and improving effectiveness, and promote information and intelligence is the general trend.

It takes five to ten years to plan overall R&D from the top. Too far is not too realistic for enterprises, too short and difficult to make good independent technology. 

A lot of technologies should start from the application basis, combined with engineering, using the basis of cooperation between Beijing Water and a number 

of research universities, the division of labor between enterprises and schools, the basic research is placed in schools or research units, engineering research and 

development and transformation in enterprises, and research and development of high-level equipment and technology that enterprises can really use.

文章来源：未来新水务