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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the failure problems encountered during the operation of the rainwater pump impellers installed in a wastewater station. The rainwater pumps are specially designed to operate in wastewater plants. The fibbers and wastes are discharged together with rainwater during storms with this type of pumps to avoid the flood of the wastewater station. Several problems have occurred in service due to the fibbers clog the gap between the impeller blades and the pump casing. The analysis of the catastrophic events associated to the rainwater pumps installed in a wastewater station is performed. As a result, it has been identified that the catastrophic events are due to the brittle fracture of the fasten bolts connecting the impeller blades and the pump hub, respectively. Analytical and numerical analysis were perform in order to determine the maximum shear stress on the fasten bolts. As a conclusion the partial clogging of the gap between one impeller blade and pump casing, inducing the lock of the blade and leading to catastrophic failure.