Pushing the boundaries

During the design, build and commissioning of a £37m sludge treatment plant at Five Fords in Wales, we identified that the sludge treatment process required complex conditions and a controlled environment to operate successfully. We adopted a digital twin approach to give us and our client more certainty during the commissioning stage to mitigate risk and shorten the lengthy programme.

The development of the twin was driven by two key questions:

1. What if we knew how the plant was going to perform in the future? and,

2. What if we could virtually simulate operating conditions before making decisions?

A platform to capture, process and visualise the data was also required, as well as a calibrated, real-time model to provide analytics. Our digital twin platform, Moata, processes billions of data points daily and can integrate with multiple software packages and machine learning modules, making it a powerful digital twin platform built for scale. To dynamically model the complex biological process, the industry-leading wastewater simulation software Biowin was used. Biowin, developed by EnviroSim, was integrated with Moata to provide real-time insight into plant operation.

The digital twin solution helps to optimise performance, reduce energy use and cut chemical consumption.

The Five Fords digital twin has allowed the team to move from reactive to proactive decision-making, and it is creating a real step-change in how we manage our assets. This is one small part of creating a wider digital twin for all water and wastewater assets. It involves building an ecosystem of supply, distribution and treatment assets and integrating catchment-wide aspects of the water cycle, such as rainfall predictions. This will only occur through collaboration and strategic partnerships, ensuring we are using the best expertise on a global level.