Ultrapure Water IIoT and Remote O&M Market Will Exceed $800 Million in 2026

27.04.2017

Operators of ultrapure water systems in power plants, pharmaceutical, semiconductor and other industries requiring ultrapure water will invest $5 billion in hardware, consumables and services this year to provide high purity water for manufacturing processes.

This is the forecast in Ultrapure Water World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company this year. Seven percent of the total expenditures ($350 million) will be spent for IIoT and Remote O&M. The IIoT segment will grow rapidly over the next decade and reach $875 million by 2026. This will be due to rapid growth in digital process management as outlined in N031 Industrial IOT and Remote O&M.

Asia will dominate the market due to its continued expansion of coal-fired power, electronics manufacturing and its leading role in generic drugs. However, international companies are dominant in IIoT and in domain expertise, so they should be able to garner a high Asian market share.

The IIoT & Remote O&M applied to the manufacturing processes will be much larger but ultrapure water is essential to producing reliable steam, salable chips and safe drugs. The challenge is to integrate ultrapure water digital process management with that of the facility.

In the electronics industries, ultrapure water with a very high degree of purity is used to clean silicon wafers and electronic components. Kurita Water Industries combines IIoT and remote monitoring with a range of products such as deionizers, RO (reverse osmosis) membranes, water treatment chemicals, and ion-exchange resins.

Suez has the opportunity to become the leader in ultrapure water IIoT and Remote O&M. It is acquiring GE Water who has the ultrapure water technology while Suez is remotely monitoring facilities around the world from a center in France. For manufacturers of pharmaceuticals GE Water now offers water treatment, reactor cleaning, USP/UPW production, process fluids treatment and pharmacopoeia monitoring instruments. Its purchase of Sievers many years ago makes it a leading supplier of TOC and other water quality instrumentation.

The former GE Betz who is a major provider of chemicals for ultrapure water will also now be part of Suez. This group has a large staff of sales engineers who are providing a service as well as sales role. In the future with more IIoT and Remote O&M onsite service will be diminished.

Veolia combines systems and monitoring with mobile fleets with the following features:

  • Global network at your local service

  • Rapid response

  • High flow rates capacity solutions

  • Zero discharge

  • Continuous production

  • Preventive service

These capabilities will provide Veolia with the capability in the future to remotely monitor and control ultrapure water at the plant with a combination of permanent and mobile systems.

Ultrapure water systems require pumps and valves. The suppliers of these pumps and valves are the same companies who supply this flow control equipment to power, semiconductor and pharmaceutical plants. In the future IIoT world, the pump and valve suppliers will all have remote control centers and digital process management programs for their products. There will be a remote-control center operating a cloud-based open platform system which will integrate and analyze all the pumps and valves as well as all the other components and processes. The end users, main digital process manager and the pump and valve companies will all have real time relevant data.

The treatment chemicals companies will be monitoring chemical usage and performance. Filter companies will be monitoring filters for ultrapure water, wastewater, lubrication, hydraulic power and dust collection. All the fans and compressors will be similarly monitored and controlled.

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