i.Sense: smart technology from igus masters sewage treatment plant

Richard Habering | 3. March 2021

Increasing process reliability, minimising maintenance effort, transmitting data in a sustainable manner – these are the requirements for the energy supply of sewage treatment plants and systems. And the whole thing is required 24/7, 365 days a year. This requires not only extremely robust and durable systems and components such as the basic flizz® system incl. chainflex® cables from igus, but also intelligent sensors. In the next sections we will describe why this is so and what solutions are available.

Most sewage treatment plants run around the clock and much of the time without any human presence. Therefore, disturbances as well as possible malfunctions sometimes remain undetected for hours. Although they usually move at a very slow speed, a malfunction usually also leads to a total breakdown. Without human supervision, the corrective element is missing here.

i.Sense:module EC.P ensures safety – 24/7

So an intelligent technical solution is needed that is able to protect the plant without human intervention. In this case, the solution is a smart EC.P (EC = e-chain P = pull force) sensor from igus, which is installed on the floating moving end of the e-chain. This sensor continuously measures the force which the sewage treatment plant requires to move the energy supply system. If these forces change due to external influences such as ice, an animal or a tool forgotten during maintenance, the sensor detects this change and autonomously switches off the system. Expensive consequential damage to the system can be prevented even without a human “supervisor”. How the technology works in detail is explained here by our smart plastics expert Richard Habering: