Innovation

With the demand for water management services growing, Nalco Water, the main water operation within Ecolab, is creating ways to monitor and control industrial processes on a global scale. It started doing so at the very beginning of the Internet and has been a true pioneer of big data. The company wanted to gather and analyze data to improve production processes, and then use the aggregated data to benchmark with industry best practices and prove to customers that its solutions make sound business sense.

The collaboration with Microsoft brings in the Azure cloud computing platform and advanced analytical capabilities that deliver Nalco Water’s water management solutions on a much larger scale and at a much deeper level than it ever has. This platform provides a suite of comprehensive, end-to-end service delivery solutions that bridge process monitoring and control; cloud platform for data management and analytics; mobile applications; and hardware.

For example, Nalco Water’s 3D TRASAR Technology, which provides real-time sensing and dosing of streams for cooling towers and other water-intensive processes, will deliver in-plant measurement and control. Thousands of sensors in thousands of facilities around the world makes up data from in-plant monitoring equipment, and that will be transferred in real-time to a secure cloud storage platform built on Microsoft Azure.

Inspiration

Water is vital to life, but it’s a finite resource – 97.5 percent of it is salt water. The 2.5 percent that is fresh comes from glaciers, ice caps, groundwater, lakes, rivers, ice and snow.

"Your morning cup of coffee takes 50 gallons of water to produce, the shirt you’re wearing commanded another 700 gallons of water to produce, and the car you drive to work requires 39,000 gallons to build. "

The demand for water has risen alongside population growth, urbanization, changing diets, rising demand for energy and increasing industrialization. Personal conservation – not watering lawns and taking shorter showers – is a start. But it’s only part of the solution.

The United Nations’ “World Water Development Report 2015” predicts that within 15 years, demand will outpace supply by almost 40 percent. That lack of freshwater will be a major source of stress for two-thirds of the world’s population.

These facts and the proximity of its operations with industry were the inspiration for Ecolab to get into Big Data solutions to control mayor water consuming processes on its customer's facilities in an efficient way.

Overall impact

This innovation impact water consumption heavily. In the short term sets a benchmark for the right amount of water to use at many different industries such as food, health, energy and chemical. In the long term by using internet of things can adjust characteristics of processes that use water automatically avoiding over usage or reprocesses needed as a result of wrong performance.

To mention a few examples that evidence the impact:

- Ford have saved 208 million water liters per year

- Samsung have saved 279 million water liters per year

- Nestle have saved 175 million water liters per year

Business benefit

As Nalco started using big data, it gained a competitive advantage and more contracts were closed with industry clients. As Andres mentioned in our interview, "Many companies may treat water but just a few like Nalco" and this is result of the value added services provided by this project. Also, as Ecolab started implementing this type of technologies worldwide they saw a rise on its stock price from 100 to 130 usd.

With this project a benchmark within industry was created and this opened the opportunity for all Nalco customers world-wide to follow the best practices in water usage at all its processes.

Social and environmental benefit

Society gets a benefit because by using water in a more efficient way the resources for future generations are going to be covered. If we don't get conscious about this, things that we consider basic such as drinking water, taking a shower or washing our clothes can be jeopardized in the future.

In the other hand the environment gets benefited because everything comes from nature and a balance between human demand and what natures offer needs to be achieved in order to keep resources for plants and animals to survive.

Interview

Andrés Almanza, District Representative