On a cold winter’s day, during active operations at a peak demand period, a critical incident occurred at an MPW water treatment system providing demineralized water to a power plant when a site contractor accidentally severed the power feed conduit while clearing snow. This resulted in a complete loss of 480V power, causing the MPW Build Own Operate Maintain (BOOM) Reverse Osmosis (RO) container to fail.
This unit is the sole source of demineralized water for this location. The plant had water storage to cover 30 hours of operation before they would be forced to shut down without a solution.
Solution:
MPW dispatched a Mobile Demineralization (DI) trailer from their nearby service center to arrive that night and maintain the tank level. Power was restored to the container and attempts to reboot the system showed a PLC and HMI failure, not allowing the unit to operate. An MPW Field Service Technician immediately partnered with Operations Engineering to assess the situation and develop a rapid response plan. The technician arrived at the site the next morning and deployed a temporary software solution using his laptop to manually operate the RO system. This workaround allowed critical monitoring and control functions to resume, ensuring water treatment could continue in a limited capacity.
The technician returned to the site the following day to oversee RO operations and maintain system functionality while a replacement Panel View HMI was expedited. Simultaneously, MPW worked closely with the customer’s maintenance and engineering teams to troubleshoot the electrical failure and identify several damaged PLC cards.
The proactive communication and coordinated effort between MPW and the customer were key to keeping operations stabilized while system repairs were underway.
Results:
Shortly, the replacement components arrived and were installed onsite by MPW. With the BOOM system operational and the tank level maintained during the outage by the DI trailer, the site was able to resume normal operation. The incident demonstrated MPW’s responsiveness, technical expertise, and seamless collaboration with the customer during a peak demand period to restore operations swiftly and safely. The successful recovery also reinforced the site’s confidence in MPW as a reliable partner for rapid response and operational support.