Water Flows in Iraq0 pages

Water Flows in Iraq
build this plant and be a part of history’.” His wife and
three children, Heather, Jordan and Drew all agreed it
would be a great experience, so he packed his bags
When he arrived in Iraq, he discovered Allen-Bradley
PLCs to be very limited in their programming with
roughly only 10 percent completed and the Modicon
Quantum PLC at roughly 80 percent ready. He
immediately set to work.
“The GUI was also limited and very static in its
appearance and function” added Watts.
Looking east from the new Flocculation Clarifier you see the
Garaaf River.
In Badaah, Iraq, David Watts is putting the finishing
touches on his work in the Nasiriyah Water Treatment
Plant which has been his home away from home for
the last eight weeks. The Nasiriyah Plant is the largest
water treatment facility in Southern Iraq and will supply
10,000 cubic meters per hour of fresh drinking water to
approximately 3 million Iraqis in Ad-Dawayah, Badaah,
Al-Shatra, Al-Garaaf, Nasiriyah and Sug Ash Shuyuk.
Individual Controllogix processors were placed at the
three pump stations along the Garaaf River, a small
branch of the Tigris River. The fourth Controllogix was
placed in the control room to function as a SCADA host
for the plant. The Quantum PLC, which has 20 Remote
I/O drops, was used to control the backwash of 20
individual filters cells.
“Then came the problem of getting the Quantum PLC
to communicate with the Controllogix,” said Watts.
“This new water facility rivals any state-of-the-art water
treatment plant we have in the States,” said Watts. But it
didn’t start out that way. Watts said he was sitting in his
home office in Krum, Texas one day when he received
an email from a friend asking if he would be interested
in going to Iraq to program some PLCs. Evidently the
PLCs had been ordered and shipped to the facility but
they had no one in the area who knew how to program
them. David Watts’ company, DWC Technology, which
he owns, is primarily involved in systems integration
and consulting for automation projects.
“I thought about it for awhile,” said Watts. “Then my
daughter said, ‘wouldn’t it be awesome to go and help
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