A water plant is one out of numerous examples of critical infrastructure which include electric
power systems, traffic control systems, manufacturing systems. Humans, domestic animals, industries, and to
mention a few, rely so much on these critical infrastructures as they depend solely on water plants services.
However, the present situation is such that water plant falls short of its use due to breakthdown,
underperformance and lack of proper management in place, especially in Nigeria. This situation has hindered
effective process control of water plants, thereby making it impossible to account correctly for its production
process and to prevent break down of machinery. In this paper, we formulated, designed and evaluated a
model that offers effective process control during production by a water plant. By means of a quantitative
research approach, the study provided a full description of the flow paths and compartments connected in a
process plant. We extracted information about the tanks sizes, piped diameter, number of pumps and number
of tanks from the operational manual booklet of the water plants as the source of the dataset. A prototype
model for the process plant was specified to establish the system's flow parts and storage compartments of
mass. Based on the extracted data, we formulated mathematical models to describe the system’s behaviour.
The model was simulated in Simulink MatLab and used to investigate the effects of varying the parameters
of the plant, especially the restriction (R) against water flow in the connecting pipes, as it affects the capacity
of the tanks. The results of the simulation show that varying any of the values of the model parameters affects
the water levels in the various tanks. Also, the results suggest a safe process parameter during processing.
Notably, the result reveals that reducing the diameter of a pipe 1 from 300mm to 25mm or below will lead to
water overflow in tanks, which will result in water wastage, machine and environmental damages. Thus, the
research provided an effortless way of determining the various pipes sizes, sizes of tanks to be used and the
expected output of the production process of the plant, before going into its physical production.