Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology

Rhodes, Greece, 8 10 September 2011

CONTROL OF A DESALINATION PLANT, INCLUDING U-PCA-BASED

MONITORING
D. GARCIA-ALVAREZ, L.G. PALACIN, J. SALAZAR, F. TADEO and C. DE PRADA
Dpt. of Systems Engineering and Automatic Control, University of Valladolid, Spain
e-mail: palacin@cta.uva.es

ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the automatic control of small-scale desalination plants based on
Reverse Osmosis. An automated system based on Principal Component Analysis
techniques (PCA) is presented, that detects the fouling or occasional breakage of the
membranes. Owing to the fact that desalination plants present several discontinuities
(due to the periodic cleanings), which might be easily confused with alarms, a special
fault detection system has been developed, by adapting a technology for monitoring of
batch processes. Finally, the monitoring system is successfully tested in simulation under
different operating conditions.
Keywords: Desalination plants, Monitoring, PCA

1.

INTRODUCTION

Reverse Osmosis (RO) is known to be an effective technique to produce drinkable water

from brackish wells and sea water: see Fritzmann et al. (2007). This is because RO
plants need less energy, investment cost, space and maintenance than other alternative
desalination processes (Gambier et al., 2007); hence, it is the preferred desalination
technique worldwide (Baker, 2004, Wilf, 2007). In the particular case of water supply of
villages and small settlements, small to medium-size RO plants are successfully used. In
this case, energy consumption is commonly fulfilled by renewable energy sources, such
as solar or wind, while diesel generators are needed in order to keep it operating when no
renewable sources are available, Tadeo et al. (2009).
Typical RO plants solve the daily variation of water demand by using big freshwater tanks
at the end of the production line, and the annual variation by switching on/off membrane
banks. It is easily understood that, a priori, this operation methodology is not optimal. On
the other hand, using a variable operation point, that is, producing more potable water
when more is consumed, it is possible to use smaller supply tanks, reducing the
evaporation and minimizing the consumption of chemical products and the cost of
equipment. Because the higher water consumption occurs when more renewable energy
is available, the renewable energy consumption can be optimized and the auxiliary
energy consumption minimized, using a variable production policy: see Salazar et al.
(2010). Other advanced control applications and optimal operation in desalinations plants
can be seen in Bacelli et al. (2009), Bartman et al. (2009), Christofides et al. (2009),
Gambier et al. (2004), McFall et al. (2008), Penate (2011), Zafra-Cabeza et al. (2009,
2011) and Zhu (2010).
This paper concentrates on developing automatic methods for detecting the fouling or
occasional breakage of the membranes in these desalination plants. One approach
widely extended in the process industry for monitoring and fault detection is the
Multivariate Statistical Process Control (MSPC): Venkatasubramanian (2003). The

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approach proposed here uses one of the most extended MSPC methods: the Analysis of
Principal Components (PCA). This technique uses historical databases in order to build
empirical models that describe the systems trend. Thus, PCA models extract useful
information from the historical data, by estimating relationships between the measured
variables. When a fault appears, this changes the covariance structure captured by the
PCA model, so this situation can be detected. It must be pointed out that some processes
with continuous behaviour can go through several operating modes due to changes in the
final product specifications, feed flow-rate compositions or set-points, as it is the case of
the desalination plants. Unfortunately, these changes might be incorrectly detected as
faults, because they might produce substantial changes in the covariance structure
captured by the PCA model. Thus, many authors have applied different solutions to solve
this problem: see, for example, Hwang et al (1999), Tien et al. (2004). Here, we adapt
some of these techniques for monitoring and fault detection of small and medium reverse
osmosis desalination plants placed in remote areas. The remote localization of these
plants makes necessary the use of automatic monitoring and fault detection tools, since
the staff cannot be permanently present. Using the current technologies could be very
easy to monitor the state of plants from a remote centralised operation centre. The plant
studied in this work is a continuous process, but in this work the monitoring is applied
using a batch monitoring PCA-based scheme (U-PCA). This approach is selected, due to
the frequent cleanings needed for the correct plant operation that might produce a
significant amount of false alarms if they are not specifically considered. Moreover, the
upper limits of the typical monitoring statistics used in control charts take high values
when the training data do not have a stationary behaviour, as it is the case of these
desalination plants. High values in the upper limits of the statistics affect negatively the
detectability properties of the fault detection method. Thus, an important contribution of
this paper is to adapt and test the U-PCA monitoring and fault detection approach in a
continuous process with intermittent changes, in order to reduce the false alarms and to
improve the detectability.
The paper is organized as follows: the U-PCA technique is described in section 2,
whereas a typical reverse osmosis plant is described in section 3. Next, the advanced
control of a simulated reverse osmosis plant, using based U-PCA monitoring is shown in
section 4. Finally, some conclusions are given.
2.

BATCH MONITORING PCA-BASED SCHEME (U-PCA)

One of the most used multivariate statistical techniques in the Process Industry is the
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique. This technique has already been used
for Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI), with good results. The PCA technique basically
generates a linear transformation that from the variables measured from the process,
which are usually highly correlated, produces uncorrelated variables, also called
components. This transformation is based on a dimensional reduction of the original data,
which means that only a few of theses components are enough to represent appropriately
the hidden sources of variability in the process. For this, the correlation structure of the
process variables is calculated. The data used in order to perform the PCA modeling for
fault detection is collected under the normal plant operation.
There are several rules in order to choose the correct number of principal components,
several of these techniques are heuristic, but the most popular procedure is the cross
validation: see Eastment (1982), Bro (2008). This approach consists on the selection of
the components which maximize the goodness of fit and the goodness of prediction.
Once a PCA model has been established using nominal data, statistics are used in order
to monitor and detect faults in a real time scheme connected to the plant. The monitoring
statistics are drawn in control charts, the faults and special causes are detected when the

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value of the monitoring statistics are greater than a specific threshold. The most common
statistics used in fault detection and monitoring are Hotellings (T2) statistic and square
prediction error (SPE or Q) statistic. The Hotellings statistic uses only the principal
components and is able to detect deviations in the latent variables. The Q statistic is
based on the rest components and can be used as a test to detect deviations in the
residuals.
These PCA approaches can only be applied when the process presents a linear
behaviour, so they are not be suitable for processes with a non-linear behaviour. Thus,
for non-linear processes a special configuration of the PCA must be applied. Some of
these variations of the classical PCA configuration are the multi way PCA (MPCA) or
unfolded PCA (U-PCA): see Nomikos et al. (1995, 1996), which is usually applied to
batch processes or transitory states and start-ups: see Kourti (2003), Garcia-Alvarez et
al. (2010). Moreover, the PCA approach is used as a fault detection tool mainly in
stationary processes. When a process presents several stationary states, same
variations of the classical PCA approach can be applied, for example, the adaptive PCA
approach (Tien et al, 2004), the recursive PCA approach (Li et al., 2000) or the
exponentially weighted PCA approach (Wold, 1994). The kind of desalination plants
considered in this paper present a similar behaviour to batch processes, so the U-PCA
will be applied.
3.

REVERSE OSMOSIS PLANTS

A typical reverse osmosis plant is shown in Fig. 1. First, a supply pump pumps brackish
or seawater to a supply tank. From this tank, water is pumped to a set of filters and
chemical additions. Then, a high pressure pump increases its pressure to a value
significantly higher than the osmotic pressure. This requires a significant pressure: up to
80 bar for very salty seawater, which makes RO to consume a significant amount of
electrical energy. The pressurized water passes through the RO membranes, but not the
dissolved salts: The difference in pressure between each side of the membranes
produces a flow of clean water through the membranes. Finally, this clean water is stored
in other tank, which supplies water to the consumers, after post-treatment, to make the
water drinkable, by the addition of chlorine and a remineralization. Typical values of clean
water flow are 45% of the inlet flow for sea water, and 75% for brackish water. An indepth description of the components of an RO plant could be consulted in Al-Bastaki et
al. (1999). A simulation tool that faithfully reproduces the operation of these kind of plants
under different conditions is presented in Palacin et al. (2011). This simulation tool will be
used later to test the proposed approach.
A central problem during operation is the decrease in performance of the membranes,
due to deposits (silt, scale, organic components, etc). It is important to notice that the
membrane permeability decreases in time because these solids deposit on the
membrane. In order to reduce this, periodical cleanings are needed. The initial
permeability increases again after each cleaning, but not completely. This gives a small
but continuous loss of efficiency that must be taken into account. Fig. 2 shows a typical
membrane permeability curve with two cleanings. The main cause of decrease of
membrane permeability decrease is the calcium carbonate precipitation. The best way to
avoid this is a good pH control of the feed flow. The Langelier Saturation Index (LSI) is
the most common way to calculate the required pH to avoid the calcium carbonate
precipitation. For values LSI > 0 calcium carbonate tends to precipitate, whereas for
values LSI < 0 water tends to dissolve calcium carbonate. The optimal pH for operation is
that pH which makes the LSI approach 0.

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Figure 1. Structure of a typical reverse osmosis plant.

Figure 2 Typical membrane permeability curve.

4.

FAULT DETECTION OF REVERSE OSMOSIS PLANTS

A central issue in fault detection of Reverse Osmosis plants is that the accumulation of
deposits in the filters and membranes, and the cleaning cycles cause that the plant has
not a strictly stationary behaviour: there are significant differences in the measurements
of pressures and concentrations when the plant is just cleaned, compared when the plant
was cleaned long ago. All these factors cause that the classical PCA approaches for
monitoring and fault detection are not effective in this kind of processes. Figure 3
presents the evolution with time of some of the statistics used in PCA techniques on a
simulated Reverse Omosis plant: a fault correspond to vaules of the statistics higher than
certain threshold (95% or 99%). In the simulation no faults were generated: However,
both the T2 statistic (Fig. 3(a)) and the Q statistic (Fig.3(b)) give a high number of false
alarms in different zones, that correspond with the different cleaning cycles.

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Figure 3. Monitoring of the RO plant using standard PCA:

T2 (a) and Q (b) monitoring statistic.
To solve this problem of non-stationarity of the process, the U-PCA technique was
adapted for this process: Fig. 4(a) shows the T2 monitoring of the membrane section
using U-PCA of the simulated Reverse Osmosis plant (without faults): the control chart on
the left show the monitoring using TRI imputation method, whereas the one on the right
correspond to the TSR imputation method: It can be seen that the number of false alarms
is significantly reduced: they only appear in the first stages, when using the TSR
imputation. As an alternative, Fig. 5(b) shows the SPE monitoring for the same set of
data, where the upper limit is normalized to one, as the thresholds in this statistic are not
constant: again, the percentage of false alarms is very low. In particular, better results are
obtained with the TSR imputation method, as the percentage of false alarms is lowest.
Looking at the results presented in figures 3 and 4, it is possible to conclude that the best
option for monitoring this RO plants is U-PCA , with the TRI imputation method for the T2
statistic, and the TSR imputation method for the SPE statistic. Finally, table 1
summarizes the false alarms percentages obtained using the different methods.
Table 1. Percentages of false alarms using standard PCA and U-PCA
Percentage
Method
2
T
Q/SPE

7%

StandardPCA
UPCA

16%

TRI

TSR

TRI

TSR

0%

2%

13%

11%

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Figure 4. Monitoring of the RO plant using the proposed U- PCA:

T2 (a) and SPE (b) monitoring statistics.
5.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper has presented a monitoring approach for fault detection in Reverse Osmosis
plants, based on one for continuous processes affected by time-varying parameters and
periodic changes. This is very adequate for reverse osmosis desalination plants, which
need periodic cleanings that change slightly the plant characteristics. This makes
necessary to use a monitoring tool that considers not only the stationary state of the plant
but the dynamics that these cleaning phases introduce into the process; otherwise, these
small changes would be detected as faults. The approach used in this article is based on
a U-PCA, reducing the ratio of false alarms and is able to detect faults in several
components in the plant, as it is shown by simulation.
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