NEWS RELEASE                                                                                        May 2017

Flow Control and Treatment is One Market

The movement of air, water, gases and non-aqueous liquids is closely tied to the treatment of those liquids. Treatment includes heat transfer, separation, filtration and reaction.

The advent of IIoT will provide a strong link to the range of flow and treat products. With remote operation and monitoring all flow and treat operations can be remotely controlled. When a process change or adjustment is needed it is very likely to be a valve adjustment to reduce or increase flow. Variable speed pumps will be increasingly used in the future for better remote control, but also to reduce energy consumption. In the IIoT era manual valves will be replaced with actuated valves which are connected to the remote-control center.

IIoT will create major changes in the way flow and treat products are marketed. Third parties will be buying many of the products. Flow and treat product suppliers will need to change their sales approach to reach these new customers.

In the IIoT era sales will be based on proven lowest total cost of ownership. The feedback on the performance of the existing products will be the equivalent of white papers informing buyers of the true performance of the product. The digital world of IIoT will make the local salesman less important. It will allow the supplier to leverage the knowledge of the company experts who will have more direct contact with the buyers. Global sourcing and contracts for all the flow and treatment components will be more common.

Many companies are positioning themselves for the IIoT era. Danaher will be leveraging the activities of the Pall filter group, the Hach monitoring division, and the Chemtreat treatment chemicals. The cleanliness of a Pall filter will be assured by feedback on the pressure drop and other parameters with Hach instruments. Chemtreat desalination chemicals will then be varied to assure that the membrane surface cleanliness is maintained.

Suez has purchased GE Water, so it can now operate wastewater plants and control them remotely from its French control center. It can add more of the GE Betz chemicals as needed. It can also control all the Degremont and GE filters and clarifiers in the plants through one cloud platform.

The acquisition of the Pentair valve division by Emerson is now complete. This created the world’s largest valve company to be integrated with the pumps and extensive IIoT software and hardware offered by Emerson.

The market for all flow and treat products is $350 billion per year. Of this total $35 billion is already in the IIoT and Remote O&M category. Over the next ten years this segment will be growing at 13% per year compounded starting with $4.5 billion next year. For more information on Flow and Treat markets click on Air/Gas/Water/Fluid Treatment and Control: World Market.