DALLAS, June 7, 2005 -- Bogota, the capital of Colombia, is home to eight million people. The Wiesner water treatment plant, which provides 65% of the city's potable water supply, is one of three water treatment plants that serve Bogota. Chief among the plant's goals is maintaining an adequate supply of water for Bogota with a satisfactory level of quality.
Every day, the company must actively control hundreds of kilometers of water pipelines, pump stations, and control valves in order to supply water to all city neighborhoods. These demands require a large workforce for operations, maintenance and new installation.
Project 1
The scope of this project includes the automation of the water treatment process. It involves comprehensive engineering, as well as the procurement of automated valves, analytical instrumentation, and process logic controllers. The overall contract covers the installation, commissioning, start-up and operation of the automation devices.
The water treatment process requires the addition of precise quantities of certain chemicals to the water being treated to generate potable water. During this process, analytical instrumentation sends information to a process controller, which in turn decides what amount of chemicals needs to be mixed with the water to achieve the right condition. The process controller sends orders to the automated valves telling them which chemicals should be let into the water. Flowserve valve actuators receive these signals and open and close the valves accordingly.
Project 2
Thanks to a Japanese loan, the city of Bogota decided to build an automated control center, which will direct all of the company's operations. The scope of this project includes the design, build and operation of the control center. This includes the construction of the new facility; the supply of process equipment, valves, actuators, software, computers; and installation, commissioning, start up, training and operation.
The water utility must be able to maintain the constant flow of potable water in spite of increases in consumption or projects in process. Engineers running the water facility must pay special attention to flow control, overpressure, and pipeline breaks and leaks. Flowserve actuators were chosen for the control of throttling valves in the main distribution network in Phase I of the project.
The end user on both projects was the water utility Empresa de Acueducto de Bogota.
The contractor was Electrohidraulica S.A. (which represents Flowserve Flow Control in the water and power markets in Colombia).
Key contacts include Armando Alvarez, Flowserve Flow Control regional manager for South/Central America; Oscar Gabriel Garcia, Electrohidraulica general manager; and Arturo Dulcey, Electrohidraulica project manager.
Based in the Dallas, Texas, area, Flowserve Corp. (www.flowserve.com) is one of the world's leading providers of fluid motion and control products and services. Operating in 56 countries, the company produces engineered and industrial pumps, seals and valves as well as a range of related flow management services.
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