June the 10th, 2023 – The Rovinj sewage system is set to be used in an additional sense – as the city’s irrigation system.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, green areas in Rovinj will be watered with 100 percent purified water from the sewage system, and the same purified water will flow out into the sea, thanks to a modern waste water management system that respects the environment and cares for the sustainability of tourism, the local economy and society.
A new Rovinj water treatment plant
This is the result of the newly constructed waste water treatment plant – UPOV Cuvi in Rovinj as part of the project for the collection, drainage and treatment of waste water in the area of the Rovinj agglomeration worth 34.3 million euros, with 70 percent of that value having been co-financed from the EU’s Cohesion Fund.
The plant will remain in a state of trial operation until December this year. The Rovinj Drainage complex project was carried out by contractors CID S.R.L. and Atzwanger SPA from Italy and the subcontractors CID – water treatment plant from Slovenia and GP Krk. Duplico, the main contractor of the electrical project, and Schneider Electric, the supplier of software solutions, are also subcontractors, and they have implemented the latest technological solutions for wastewater monitoring and management.
IoT was used
Schneider Electric, the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, implemented energy solutions in the newly built facility with its partner Duplico in recent months. It involves the application of complex medium voltage and low voltage power equipment for automation, in which IoT connected products such as frequency switches, HMI interface (human machine interface) and PLC (programmable logic controllers) are primarily integrated. By connecting and networking them to the platform, the EcoStruxure system is upgraded with GeoSCADA monitoring and control software, which enables advanced analytics with dynamic real-time data views.
More efficient resource usage
Thanks to all of this automation and digitalisation, the supplier of water services in Rovinj will use its resources more efficiently and manage the drainage system better, based on the centralisation of the monitoring and management system, with 24-hour monitoring of the actual situation. With this, Odvodnja Rovinj will simplify the monitoring and elimination of malfunctions in the system and equipment, reduce maintenance costs, detect flow and pressure deviations, have reliable and safe monitoring of data important for wastewater management, and a system that can be easily upgraded for future needs and solutions.
Savings and a quick return on the investment
Based on the results of already implemented Schneider Electric solutions in similar plants across Croatia and around the world, it is to be expected that the new Rovinj sewage system and drainage plan will improve operational efficiency (OPEX) and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). Additionally, thanks to the digital transformation of the entire system based on Schneider Electric’s solutions, the water supply and drainage sector can achieve significant electricity savings, while the return on investment (ROI) can be in the next few years. Ultimately, both residents and visitors to Rovinj will have a more efficient public institution and a reliable and high-quality wastewater management service.
The entre Rovinj sewage system will be improved
As part of the project, 28 kilometres of new Rovinj sewage system network were built in settlements which until now didn’t have a sewage system. The construction of the waste water treatment plant worth 17.8 million euros began in October 2021, and from December 2022, the plant has been in trial operation. After the successful 1st phase of trial work and positive results of wastewater analysis from accredited laboratories, which show that all the tested parameters of purified water are in accordance with the prescribed limit values of pollutant emissions in municipal wastewater, the second biological treatment line was put into operation, and the 2nd phase of trial work is currently in progress. At the beginning of June of this year, a plant for the solar drying of sludge worth 2.5 million euros was also put into trial operation. The trial operation of the waste water treatment plant will be completed by December 2023.
