Instrumentation Monthly Test | Measurement | Control
Powelectrics‘ Metron telemetry is being deployed by one of Ireland’s leading instrumentation specialists, to ensure that their chemical industry customer can meet stringent environmental commitments and maintain their operating licence.
For over 40 years, Bonner have designed, installed and maintained instrumentation solutions, enabling a wide range of businesses to comply with regulatory standards, especially those engaged in high pressure, 24/7 processes and highly-regulated environments, such as food & beverage, pharmaceutical and the manufacture of medical devices.
Waste liquid from the chemical plant is captured in containment areas and cleansed, prior to being discharged into the Council’s waste system. Before the installation of an automated m2m solution, local test meters did not transmit data. Daily manual checks were necessary. There were no automatic alerts if pH levels extended beyond environmentally safe values, which meant waste could be accidently discharged, before the levels were realised.
Bonner were invited to deliver a bespoke solution, that could monitor, record and control the pH of discharged waste-water. This included knowing the pH at time of discharge, flow rate and flow volumes.
For this project Bonner designed a control panel, with a PLC to control the process. Sensors were selected to take all the necessary readings and connected to Powelectrics Metron telemetry device. The compact Metron unit was easily located inside the panel.
Each Metron telemetry device offers four analogue inputs, so for this part of the project, only one Metron telemetry device was required. This meant that only one SIM card was needed to transmit all the data, making this an extremely cost-effective m2m solution. Another Metron was also deployed at a different location to monitor the pH of rainwater collected.
In fact, Powelectrics Metron4 offers expansion cards for pulse counting & RS232 and options to develop RS485 & CANBUS interfaces. With solar, battery & external power options, IP67 enclosure, operational temperatures – 25 to +65°C and the ability to support 2G and 4G communications, it is an exceptionally versatile and affordable piece of kit in many global environments and applications!
With the Industry4.0 solution in place, regular readings are taken and reported every ten minutes to the Powelectrics MetronView cloud, which offers customisable dashboards and reporting. Data and alerts can be viewed by unlimited users, within a hierarchy system, on any web-enabled device.
If the pH of the waste is unacceptable, waste is now automatically diverted back to the 25,000 litre treatment area to be reprocessed and will not discharged. Alerts can also be sent to local management, who can investigate any underlying reasons and take any necessary action immediately.
This protects the water quality for all stakeholders within the County Council water supply network and ensures that Bonner’s customer can provide reliable evidence of compliance with environmental legislation. An additional benefit, on this relatively unautomated site, was that the data can also be used for the general monitoring of production, for trend analysis and the identification of maintenance needs.
Patrick Bonner, Managing Director “We have known Powelectrics for several years and I’m delighted to see an increasing number of applications suited to their user-friendly and well-supported Metron technology.
Due to the low-cost of the unit, its reliability and ease of cloud access, we at Bonner have been able to offer additional technical support to operators and maintenance personnel without needing to be on site or meet the additional costs of specialised hardware. This has saved all involved time, reduced support and running costs and increased our value to our clients.
This project has delivered everything our customer asked for. Now we are expanding our use of Metron technology into other applications, such as specialised predictive tank monitoring solutions and we look forward to a fruitful future partnership with Powelectrics.”
Powelectrics act as a connection between the world of sensors and the Internet of Things. The company’s ’connected sensor’ solutions are employed in many industries including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, Adblue, fuels, oils, LPG, lubricants, food and beverage, waste & recycling, landfill & leachate, agriculture, utilities, pumping and environment, rail and security.
Please get in touch to discuss your application on +44 1827 310 666 sales@powelectrics.co.uk
