Water Level Control System using Programmable Logic Controller (PLC): Rujban Water Supply System

Abstract

The main challenges related to water affect human settlements' sustainability: the lack of access to safe and clean water at all times. These problems have massive consequences on human health, safety, economic growth, and development. Rujban city faces this crisis despite more than five decades trying to resolve this problem. In this paper, we describe the existing water supply system, which consists of three main components: Karthoom Automated Control System (KACS), Idref Automated Control System 1 (IACS1), and Idref Automated Control System 2 (IACS2). We propose the control system design of the KACS to meet the city's demand and keep the collecting tank with an acceptable level of water continuously. This paper presents the Karthoom Automatic Control System (KACS) design to control the water supply system using the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). PLC controller is a central part of the proposed automatic control system due to its reliability and ease of installing and maintenance. Besides, we use PLC to carry out the water level control, sequencing, monitoring, display, and control functions, such as logic, sequence, timing, counting, and arithmetic logic. To maintain an appropriate water level in the collecting tank, we control the operation of the feeding submersible pumps (“on” or “off”) by sensing the collecting tank's water levels. This is accomplished by utilizing four-stage-level sensors, seven water flow sensors, and an RF transmitter/receiver to monitor and control all pumps' operations and protect them from dry running and then accomplish the sensing stage. We introduce the control system components, the operation flow chart, and the proposed system's implementation. Finally, we implemented and conducted a simulation experiment using the Siemens S7-200 PLC to control the overall water supply system and evaluate the proposed control approach's performance.