Mueller Water Products is a prominent global player with exciting new growth in Asia where they have seven international office locations including Singapore, Jingmen and Tai Cang manufacturing plants in China, and a large network of businesses across Asia.
Singer® automatic control valves and Echologics® acoustic-based pipeline leak detection and condition assessment are two Mueller Water Product lines that resonate with Asia as they are faced with increasingly high population density and water scarcity. These utilities want advanced technologies that enable water conservation, water recovery, or wastewater treatment for recovery and reuse. So, it’s fitting that leak detection solutions and pressure reducing valves are becoming vital to water conservation, not only in Asia but around the globe as water scarcity becomes more prevalent.
Leak detection and condition assessment solutions from Mueller Water Products non-invasively detect underground leaks and assess the conditions of water mains without breaking ground or disrupting service. The EchoShore® -TX monitors large-diameter water mains while the EchoShore®-DX monitors smaller distribution mains using sophisticated acoustic sensors and proprietary processing algorithms that detect and locate the source of faint noises emitted by leaks, long before they become detectable by conventional detection methods.
EchoShore-TX is currently monitoring approximately100 km of a critical Singapore pipeline to identify leaks and prioritize the necessary maintenance to mitigate water loss and protect transmission main assets. A new “mobile” version of the platform, EchoShore®-M, is also becoming popular with utilities seeking to reduce non-revenue water (NRW) loss across transmission main networks located in challenging environments.
The first EchoShore-M project in Southeast Asia was installed in Malaysia to survey more than 3,000 km of pipeline. Within the first 17 months of deployment they identified and located 252 leaks and were able to save more than 25 million liters per day. The utility expanded its leak detection program to survey an additional 1,500 km of trunk mains at an average rate of 40 km/week, accurately pinpointing 120 leaks and saving a further 7.9 million liters per day. That’s a saving of 32 million liters per day — enough water to supply an additional 152,000 residents every day.
Mueller Water Products is engaging with utilities and municipalities across Asia with its Singer pressure control valves products “made in Asia for Asia” manufactured at the company’s factory in Tai Cang, China. The company invested heavily over the past few years in developing an extensive array of electronically controlled devices designed to reduce water loss through improved pressure management techniques.
Singer applied its water loss control and pressure management solutions for a customer in Indonesia experiencing severe problems with over-pressure pipe failures, significant water loss, and low reservoir levels that frequently deprived a third of one city’s population of reliable water supply. A special meter-controlled and pilot-operated pressure control valve achieved an astounding 75% reduction in water loss, a 300% reduction in pipeline breakage, a 33% reduction in electrical power consumption used by reservoir supply pumps — saving enough water to permit thousands of new service connections.
Another utility in Malaysia needed help resolving a serious water loss problem caused by old and inaccurate level-valves that allowed their reservoirs to overflow. Replacing them with special Singer altitude valves and pilots enabled maintaining maximum reservoir levels, accurately controlling the drain of the reservoirs before re-filling, and significantly reduced pipeline pressure leakage. Overpressure pipeline failures dropped 93% from 3000 per year to only 200 per year, and today’s optimized reservoir water levels are helping to delay water rationing for almost a million residents during their dry season.
Recent success stories emerging from water infrastructure projects involving Mueller’s leak detection and pressure reducing valve solutions in Asia are just the beginning, according to CEO Scott Hall. Waiting their turn are several other Mueller brands, including Mueller Canada flow control products, Hydro Gate water control-gate products, James Jones Company and U.S. Pipe Valve & Hydrant Division fire hydrant products, and Milliken Valve and Henry Pratt Company valve products.
