The industry is in continuous evolution in the context of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 requirements and expected benefits. Some sectors allow higher reconfiguration dynamics considering the interference capabilities and process/equipment renewals, but others have considerable inertia that is many times justified. In most encountered situations, the reality confirms that the industry is struggling with new demands such as interoperation and efficiency improvements. The water industry makes no difference, being a sector with critical infrastructures and highly varied subsystems, where invasive interference in legacy solutions tends to be avoided. Following previous successful footsteps in researching a proactive decentralized historian, the current work focuses on a case study that refers to a water treatment and distribution facility that has been operated for several years, and the current operating regime was established by local operators following accumulated observations, restrictions, and response strategies. The proactive historian was tailored for the current case study, and it was applied and tested in the suboptimal functioning scenario where the water sources configuration was manually selected and used for water availability and energy efficiency, but without assuming current/future failures or different water demands. The proposed low-cost historian targeted to improve the functioning and operation of the water facility considering energy efficiency and other impacting outcomes of the current strategy and to establish an automatic functioning regime in a completely non-invasive manner towards the local legacy solution. The results were satisfactory, proving that the historian is able to adapt to a particular and suboptimal functioning real industrial scenario, establish recipes in a process-aware manner, and interoperate with the local legacy solution in order to apply improving actions.

Water treatment stations (WTSs) provide drinking water to the community and are critical infrastructures of any village or city. The main energy consumption of WTSs is associated with the operation of the pumping units installed in the water supply stations (WSSs). The parameters of the pumping units installed in the WSSs are continuously adjusted during service to meet the requirements of the customers. Therefore, variable-speed pumping units (VSPUs) are feasible technical solutions implemented in WSSs. Several strategies combining VSPUs and constant-speed pumping units (CSPUs) have been developed to operate in WSSs. A technical solution with four pumping units (two VSPUs and two CSPUs) is implemented in Timisoara pumping station No. 1 (TPS1) in the Bega municipal water treatment station (MWTS). The layout of TPS1 is detailed, and its energy consumption from the budget of the Bega MWTS is quantified. The operation strategy with four pumping units selected in TPS1 is investigated. The number of hours in service of each pumping unit and the total operating time of all pumping units in the last six years are examined. The specific power consumption associated with the operation of the pumping units installed in TSP1 is detailed. The failure incidents of the pumping units counted in service are enumerated and correlated with the operating conditions of the pumping units. A new strategy developed for the operation of the pumping units installed in TPS1 is proposed to better adapt to the operating conditions, improving the specific power consumption as well as diminishing the failure incidents. The new operation strategy is presented and assessed based on the data acquired from TPS1 over one year. The conclusions and the lessons learned in this case study are drawn in the last section.

Improvement possibilities of industrial systems are driven by Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 concepts. The basic enablers are related to interoperation, and some efficiency and safety increasing solutions may be direct outcomes. Other benefits of interoperability are related to data integration, and the ability to analyze the collected information and to establish recipes for improvements. One of the most important targets required by the industry is the prediction capability, to forecast equipment faults or process values. The water industry with its specific characteristics is following the same path and needs efficiency increasing solutions that could be applied on its many legacy systems. Any data-driven solution is a case study driven solution. Therefore, the current research is started with deploying pilots that consists of proactive historians applied to functioning legacy water sector facilities. The work is presenting a Long-Short-Term-Memory (LSTM) neural networks-based prediction solution within the low-cost decentralized proactive historian. The exposed case study technological process is a wastewater treatment plant, where sludge pump failures are predicted to improve maintenance activities, as well as a chemical oxygen demand water quality indicator to improve process control strategy adjustments. The algorithm is generated as a result of a batch training and afterwards it is adapted also to incremental training. The solution is conceived for the hardware and software conditions of the proactive historian and the deployment within the real scenario proved excellent results, with the ability to provide 5 hours ahead correct predictions.

In hydropower systems among hydropower plants there are integrated pumping stations (PS). In order to ensure higher flow rate, the pumps have constructive differences besides regular. Consequently, the complex shape of the suction-elbow with symmetric inlet generates an unsteady flow which is ingested by impeller. These phenomena's also generate stronger unsteady flow conditions, such as stall, wakes, turbulence and pressure fluctuations, which affect the overall mechanical behaviour of the pump with vibration, noise and radial and axial forces on the rotor. Alternatively, an axial rotor can be installed in front of the impeller. In this case, the flow non-uniformity will be decreased and the static pressure will be increased at the impeller inlet. Consequently, the efficiency behaviour practically remains unchanged while the cavitational behaviour is improved. From the assembly between axial rotor and centrifugal impeller, the axial rotor usually works in cavitation and is often replaced. The paper investigates experimentally and numerically the comparison between pump impeller without and with axial rotor hydrodynamics taking into account the flow given by the symmetrical suction elbow. Full three-dimensional turbulent numerical investigation of the symmetrical suction elbow, with axial rotor and without, pump impeller and volute are performed. The hydrodynamic analysis confirms that once the axial rotor is mounted in front of the pump impeller increase the static pressure and the incidence angle is improved at the inlet of the pump impeller.