new environmental standards, every drop of chemicals are related to compliance and cost, metering pumps are becoming a key turning point for water treatment companies from sloppy to precision. "In the past, manual dosing error of up to 15%, now relying on intelligent metering pump system, the error is compressed to within 1%." A large water company's technical director recently told reporters. With China's national environmental protection department on industrial and municipal wastewater discharge standards across the board, accurate dosing from optional technology upgraded to a necessary means.
After the implementation of the new environmental regulations in 2025, the country's wastewater treatment plants are facing stricter emission targets. The limits of key parameters such as total phosphorus, total nitrogen and COD have been further tightened, and the traditional crude dosing mode can no longer meet the requirements.
At the circulating water treatment site of China Railway Intercity, engineers demonstrated the new challenges:
"When the raw water quality fluctuates, there is a lag in manual adjustment, and the effluent water quality is easy to exceed the standard. The new standard requires turbidity to be stabilized within NTU, and the traditional method achieves only 89% of the standard.
The economic pressure of the new standard is equally significant. Industry data show that the cost of chemicals accounted for 30% -50% of the operating costs of sewage treatment, excessive dosage directly eat up corporate profits. Precise control of the dosage of pharmaceuticals has become a necessity for survival.
The core equipment to achieve accurate dosing - modern metering pump, is experiencing a technological leap. In the system of China Railway Intercity, the multi-parameter water quality monitoring network collects data every 3 seconds, and combines with LSTM algorithm to predict the future water quality trend.
Intelligent metering pump workflow has formed a closed loop:
online sensor real-time monitoring of water quality parameters → control algorithms to calculate the required pharmaceutical → metering pump to perform accurate dosing → feedback system to verify the treatment effect.
Key technological innovations are concentrated in three areas:
- Sensing precision: the use of fluorescence concentration sensor, pharmaceutical concentration fluctuations controlled within ± 2%
- Control brain: feed-forward - feedback double closed-loop system, PID controller to dynamically adjust the pump frequency (precision ± 0.5Hz)
- Actuator: frequency conversion metering pump supports 0.1-10L/h micro-flow regulation, error ≤ ± 1%
Micro-flow measurement bottleneck has also been broken. Xiamen Jingchuan's high-precision flowmeter can stably detect 3L/H level flow, error ≤ ± 0.5%. After the application in an industrial park, the monthly waste of pharmaceuticals has been reduced from 1.2 tons to nearly zero.
Metering pump technology is evolving to a higher level of intelligence. SEKO Segal metering pumps have been realized with online monitors, PLC system depth integration, when the pH value deviates from the set value automatically adjust the dosing frequency.
"Metering pumps have been upgraded from auxiliary equipment to the core of water treatment to meet emission standards." Industry experts pointed out that in the future, metering pumps with both explosion-proof certification and ultra-low pulsation characteristics will play a greater role in special wastewater treatment fields such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals, and promote the transformation of the water treatment industry to precision and low-carbon.
