Tampico, Mexico 2023
The municipality of Altamira is located on the eastern coast of Mexico within Tampico’s metropolitan area, in the State of Tamaulipas. Since the signing of an agreement in 2015 - when Altamira’s population was ~67,000 - the La Puerta water treatment plant in Tampico had sold Altamira blocks of potable water, pumped through a 33" diameter conduction pipe at a rate of 170 lps.
By 2022, the population of Altamira had grown by ~20%, significantly affecting demand for water. Up to four times a day, the operator, Tampico Water Utility (COMAPA), would have to manually regulate the flow through a butterfly valve installed according to the original design of the plant. Nevertheless, flows above 280 lps were measured, well above the 170 lps initially agreed. This extra flow was at the expense of the population of Tampico, who were left short of water.
Staff of COMAPA requested technical support from Aquestia to address the challenge. Having evaluated the situation and the existing infrastructure, Aquestia’s experts recommended installing a 24" diameter DOROT S300 control valve, together with its flagship smart ConDor solution - an automatic, autonomous system used to activate hydraulic control valves to perform any function, or combination of functions, via local or remote control and an A.R.I. D-050 air valve downstream of the control valve.
The ConDor enables the operator to regulate, monitor and operate the valve remotely, thereby ensuring a steady flow of 170 lps during the day and 90 lps during nighttime. The flow rate can also be managed according to demand at different times. As well as relieving the operator of the time-consuming task of manual regulation, a 40 percent water saving has been achieved.
The above graph has been extracted from theSkyPlatform - a real-time, cloud-based web platform designed for overseeing, monitoring, and controlling the ConDor - used by COMAPA. The blue line shows the regulated flow to Altamira, adjusted according to demand on the network during day and night.
