Flexible Control. Versatile Water Treatment.

Oil and gas production generates vast volumes of produced water that must be treated before reuse or disposal, with dissolved air flotation (DAF) systems serving as a primary treatment technology. In upstream Energy & Utilities operations, control requirements are demanding: operators must manage variable flow rates, shifting site conditions, and equipment that routinely moves between wellpad locations. Legacy control architectures lacked the flexibility to scale across single or multiple DAF units and required extended commissioning windows each time a system relocated to a new jobsite—introducing costly operational delays and limiting responsiveness in fast-paced upstream environments where downtime directly affects production continuity.

Rockwell Automation deployed its PlantPAx distributed control system (DCS) to deliver a standardized, scalable control architecture for DAF water treatment units. PlantPAx was selected for its process-optimized controller libraries, pre-engineered process objects, and its ability to unify instrumentation, HMI, and control logic on a single integrated platform. The architecture was designed for flexibility from the outset: control logic can be configured for a single DAF unit or expanded to govern multiple units simultaneously without requiring an architectural redesign. Because the system is built on open, industry-standard communication protocols, commissioning at a new site becomes a streamlined procedure rather than a full integration project. Operators gain consistent visibility into water treatment performance regardless of how many units are active on a given site.

The PlantPAx-based control solution delivered measurable improvements in throughput capacity and deployment agility:

• Throughput: Each DAF unit processes up to 3,000 gallons per minute, equivalent to approximately 100,000 barrels of produced water per day
• Scalability: A single control platform manages one or multiple DAF units without architectural changes, accommodating variable production demand
• Commissioning speed: New-site deployment is typically completed in one to four hours, dramatically reducing mobilization time versus conventional installations

Operators benefit from a consistent control environment across configurations, reducing training overhead and enabling faster adaptation to changing site conditions.

• Standardized, redeployable control architectures reduce total lifecycle commissioning costs when equipment routinely moves across multiple upstream sites.
• Pre-engineered process objects and open communication protocols are the primary drivers of rapid commissioning—selecting a DCS platform with these built in is more effective than custom-engineering flexibility later.
• Scalability should be a primary design criterion for produced water treatment control systems, where production volumes and site configurations shift frequently.
• A one-to-four-hour commissioning window is achievable when the control architecture is purpose-built for redeployment rather than treated as a fixed, site-specific installation.