ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

Woodford Water Filtration Project

Woodford Folk Festival, situated at Woodford Queensland, runs multiple festivals throughout the year. With no access to the municipal council water grid, all water, including drinking water is treated on site, sourcing water from a variety of small dams. The water is treated and then stored in six water tanks ranging in capacity from 300 kL to 3.5 ML. The tanks are located within 3km from the water treatment facility with existing telephone cable infrastructure between the filtration plant and the storage tank sites. This thesis project involved the design and installation of a low cost remote water monitoring system. Water levels are gathered by air columns and pressure sensors. The signals are sent via a 4-20mA current signal back to the filtration plant. At the filtration plant the signals are electrically isolated, and are displayed in real time on a pc. The software developed to record and graph the usage signals can perform analysis of the data such as water usage rates. This can then be used by the filtration plant operators to adjust water treatment characteristics, estimate future demand, plan water treatment pumping targets and identify leaks in the system.