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Smart Water Filtration: How AI is Changing Water Treatment

Artificial intelligence (AI) is having beneficial effects on just about every aspect of our lives, and most of the time, we don’t even know it’s happening. While some individuals are skeptical about the whole concept of AI and particularly its use in creative areas, using it in water treatment is surely a positive thing. When fed the right information, including historical data, AI’s algorithms can analyze data from sensors and make predictions concerning purity and potential issues, while keeping a virtual eye on what is going on in real time.

This is major progress for the water industry, coming as it does on top of the advances made in recent years in filtration. With this most precious of resources being prone to natural contaminants, while our H20 is basically still as it was in the beginning, in the US, there is nationwide mains water available. While we are relying increasingly on delivery for everything from household goods to cooked food, we are inclined to overlook the fact that for most American households, water has been brought to their property as a matter of course for many years now.

Filtration is the result of scientific research that can show us exactly what is in the water, and it enables the government to provide a crystal clear, thoroughly healthy “product”, as manufacturers and suppliers would call it. Meanwhile, those using well water have been able to bring their own supply up to scratch through domestic filters.

What AI adds to the picture is automation and a constant supervision that doesn’t work shifts, doesn’t get tired and will never turn a blind eye to a potential problem. In many ways AI is the ideal employee. We don’t want it running the world, but keeping our water supply pristine is clearly helpful.

How AI-Driven Water Monitoring and Automated Filtration Adjustment Can Help You

Monitoring is a very 21st century phenomenon, it’s not necessarily what we want in every area of our life, but when it means someone or something is keeping an eye on matters that can affect our health and safety, what’s not to like? Imagine having a health professional looking at your water supply 24/7. If anything occurred that wasn’t ideal, they could alert you or get it fixed without bothering you at all.

That is never going to happen. Even the mega-rich are not going to deploy paid personnel in that way: it’s a waste of human resources. On the other hand, your water supply is the kind of thing you can’t take chances with, particularly with climate issues and particularly unpredictable rainfall being as they are these days, plus the potential damage that could be caused by someone bent on causing trouble and disruption in a community.

Messing the water up: there is going to be a movie made about that one day, and the only question is whether it’s going to be speculating on the possibility and waking up to it, or based on a true story, so the damage has already been done, and the world is on the other side of it.

How AI Helps in Reusing Wastewater

Recycling is an area in which water has been ahead of the game without our really thinking about it. Before technology made it possible to clean up used water to such a standard that it can be drunk again, it was a matter of using it once and discarding it. We didn’t even care where it went, much less what it contained.

All that has changed with the modern ethos of making the most of what we’ve got and not merely grabbing something else once the first lot is unusable.

AI makes it possible to remove such things as heavy metals from wastewater, resulting in more potential sources of reconditioned water that is perfectly potable, to use the Latin-derived term the industry has chosen to indicate that it is safe to drink.

To read the research into this is to risk drowning in a sea of jargon and technicalities, but scientific papers are always like that, and when the US government is telling us what was once toxic and foul is now not just potable but pleasant, that should be good enough.

Why A Digital Replica in Water Treatment Is a Good Thing

In the entertainment industry, the use of AI to produce digital replicas of voices and even musical styles is causing much resentment among artists and composers, but again, in the water industry, there is no controversy because it is in everyone’s best interests. A digital replica (AKA digital twin) of a water treatment plant allows the water company to use real-time data, advanced analysis techniques, and mathematical models to determine how the real plant is performing and predict how it is likely to do in the future, so that improvements can be made and potential issues avoided.

In this case, simulations and algorithms take the place of experts observing the real thing. Predictive maintenance is a step forward from conventional maintenance because it is a hard-headed process that employs inarguable data rather than personal opinion. With the ability to combine information about similar systems in other locations, along with news of other initiatives that could be put to good use, it enables superior planning, construction, management, and development.

In the home, some forward-thinking people are investing in AI to perform the same kinds of analysis and prediction to monitor and improve heating and air-conditioning, and even to spot potential maintenance issues before they get the chance to have an adverse effect on the building and conditions within it. When water is added to the list, it can only improve lives and reduce money spent on fuel bills and repairs.

Many years ago, progress was made with the introduction of meters that the electricity, gas and water people would come and read, while smart meters that enable the consumer to see what is happening in terms of consumption right now, rather than waiting for a potentially large bill, has taken it a step further. AI assistance in this sort of thing is a logical development. Smart water filtration is part of the process.

Nothing to fear and everything to gain, then, is the story of AI’s involvement in water treatment.