Pilot with innovative data-driven maintenance at Hengelo wastewater treatment plant

Water board Vechtstromen and the technology company New Current conducted a pilot with data-driven maintenance at the Hengelo wastewater treatment plant. For the pilot, the water authority selected eight critical components of the wastewater treatment plant, including aerators and pumps. To make the test especially challenging, the authority skipped maintenance on one sludge pump. Although everything initially seemed to function well, New Current's system detected and alerted about increasing wear in time. A few weeks later, the pump did indeed fail.

The test demonstrated that predictive maintenance is feasible—not too early, not too late, and not unnecessary. In this case, New Current's system could have prevented 52 hours of downtime. Following the successful pilot project, Vechtstromen decided to implement the technology in other parts of its wastewater treatment plants. The system has already been used to make new predictions.