WWTP Process Control
Severe-Cold Instrumentation for Heihe & Shuangliao WWTPs (−40 °C)
1 / 2Project Background
Two municipal wastewater plants in China's far northeast — Heihe (CASS process, 50,000 m³/day) and Shuangliao (A²O+MBR) — face some of the harshest operating conditions anywhere: river-ice seasons of six and four months respectively, with winter temperatures down to −40 °C.
Customer Challenge
Extreme cold freezes and disables ordinary instruments, and low-temperature brittleness causes failures precisely when continuous monitoring is most needed. Both plants required full-process monitoring — MLSS, TSS, dissolved oxygen, pH, ORP, COD, ammonia, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, BOD, level, differential level, gas flow and pressure — that simply keeps working through the long freeze.
The TENGINE Solution
TENGINE deployed 36 instruments of 12 types at Shuangliao and 51 instruments of 11 types at Heihe — MLSS and TSS analyzers, MTU high-precision turbidity, LDO luminescent dissolved oxygen, pH, ORP, COD, ammonia-nitrogen, total phosphorus and total nitrogen analyzers, BOD, B-S gas detection alarms, ultrasonic level and differential-level meters, thermal gas mass flowmeters, electromagnetic flowmeters and pressure transmitters — with heated instrument enclosures available for the severe-cold sites. The Heihe installation was completed in July 2011.
Implementation
The instruments were deployed across the CASS tanks, A²O+MBR units and effluent points, with heated enclosures protecting the installations against the −40 °C winters.
Project Results
Both plants have run their monitoring through year after year of extreme cold without interruption — proving that properly engineered instrumentation keeps data flowing where ordinary equipment freezes, and giving high-latitude cities a proven reference for severe-cold wastewater monitoring.
Related Case Studies

A mega-project of this scale places extreme demands on water quality data  accuracy and stability must hold over decades of operation. The wastewater treatment works required continuous online monitoring of oil content in water: a demanding measurement that has to run unattended in a harsh coastal desert environment, resist fouling, and integrate cleanly into plant process control.

Membrane performance calibration demands precise, time-aligned and traceable water-quality data to verify retention, anti-fouling and cleaning-recovery behavior. The pain points were acute: micro-leakage is hard to detect, and instrument drift under variable operating conditions contaminates the baseline data that the whole evaluation depends on.

Sludge concentration and blanket-level measurement were unreliable, so discharge relied on operator experience. Timing and volume were hard to control precisely — under-discharge, over-discharge and sludge loss all occurred, destabilizing effluent quality and pushing up running costs.
Facing a similar monitoring challenge?
Tell us about your application — our engineers will reference this project experience and design a solution for your site.

