Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition

The regional water authorities of Lake Zug in Switzerland required the automation of 30 remote stormwater basins and pumping stations and the networking of these to the central wastewater treatment plant. In 2002 Swiss engineering company Chestonag Automation AG won the contract to supply this system.

The ARA Schönau plant treats residential and industrial wastewater from an area with approximately 140 000 residents. The dry-weather treatment capacity of the plant is 800 litres per second. In wet weather the maximum treatment capacity is 1600 litres per second, with an additional 1200 litres per second which are mechanically cleaned and discharged into the nearby river.

The 30 stations around Lake Zug collect surface water and wastewater from the surrounding towns in stormwater basins and where possible the surface water from residential areas is separated and led directly into the lake. The stormwater basins have a storage capacity of 100-1000 m³ and the pumping station has a capacity of 20-200 litres per second. From the stormwater basins, the wastewater is pumped to the ARA Schönau plant. A total of 75 kilometres of pipes and tunnels connect the remote stations with the plant. The pipe and tunnel system has a storage capacity of 8000 m³, which is used as a giant stormwater basin. In heavy rains, when the basins fill up quickly, some water is discharged directly into the lake. The discharge outlet is at the top of the basin to ensure that the released water contains the lowest amount of particulate matter.

Source and more info: instrumentation

Austrian city Lienz provides its citizens and businesses with cost-efficient environmentally friendly heating and electricity from wood and solar energy. At the heart of the network is a modular boiler control system.

Austrian city Lienz is home to one of the most cost efficient and environmentally friendly district heating networks in the Tirol region.

Currently around 50 km long, the network will eventually be extended an additional 7km. At that point, approximately 950 properties will be supplied throughout the year with environmentally friendly, low-cost heating from a combination of wood and solar energy. Its final capacity will provide a heating output of 74 million kilowatt hours.

To provide this, two thermal power stations will primarily generate the required energy from biomass furnaces and solar power. A buffer storage with a capacity of 400 m3 intercepts load peaks from the district heating network and enables smooth operation of the biomass heating systems. The additional oil boiler is used only to provide support at periods of particularly high demand and supplies less than five per cent of the total thermal energy during normal operation.

The system was installed by Kohlbach, a company with a long track record in the supply of CHP and district heating technology in the region.

The district heating system was delivered in two stages. The Lienz 1 heating power station uses: two biomass boiler systems: a hot water boiler with a rated power of 7 MW and a thermal oil boiler with a rated power of 6MW; one organic Rankine cycle (ORC) process that supplies 1 MW of rated electrical power; one solar plant with 630 m_ surface area of collectors; one exhaust gas purification plant, carried out in a first stage by a multi-cyclone downstream of each biomass furnace and in the second stage by a shared exhaust gas purification plant including exhaust gas condensation; and two oil boilers.

Source and more info: engineerlive

Automation software provider Wonderware yesterday announced an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric through which it will help Mitsubishi create PLC and MES offerings that are pre-integrated with Wonderware software.

The pact between Wonderware, a unit of Invensys plc, and Mitsubishi’s automation division will focus on integrating Wonderware’s human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software with Mitsubishi’s e-F@ctory manufacturing executions systems (MES) and MELSEC PLCs.

The new partners are cooperating on the technical work involved in enabling interoperation among their respective products, said Mark Davidson, Wonderware’s vice president of global product marketing. The two companies will also conduct joint marketing efforts to promote the synergies among the products.

Mitsubishi is using Wonderware’s software development kits to enable its hardware to work with Wonderware’s HMI and SCADA software. The partnership does not involve joint sales efforts, Davidson noted; manufacturers looking to take advantage of the interoperability between the two brands will still need to purchase software from Wonderware and PLCs or other automation hardware from Mitsubishi.

Source and more info: managingautomation

A number of new strategic features and enhancements have been added to the Yokogawa FAST/TOOLS distributed supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system.

New developments in FAST/TOOLS Release 8.4 include a trending package, high-availability computing with ‘hot standby’ for reduced downtime, a LINUX port and a number of new drivers for popular control systems.

This new trending package provides outstanding visualisation capabilities and a high level of flexibility via a highly-intuitive user interface. It can operate in a stand-alone configuration or alongside the USER/FAST module of FAST/TOOLS.

Features of the trending package include 2D and 3D rendering, full zoom capabilities and animation, historical and real-time trending, powerful sliders for various axes including value and time, easy time-range selection and automatic selection of history groups. It supports a maximum of 20 pens, as well as relative and shift related time intervals, and trend data can be exported in bitmap and CSV data files. Other features include configurable legends (location, description and transparency), the ability to reverse time and value axes, and complete flexibility of window decoration and layout.

The high availability computing package provides a hot-standby FAST/TOOLS server configuration to support redundant server configurations and reduce down-time. Features include redundant server support, the monitoring of CPU levels and activity of FAST/TOOLS processes, synchronising data between redundant servers, watchdog monitoring, and the logging of events and diagnostics of changes in the hot standby configuration.

Source and more info: electropages

Six new handheld operating devices in the B&R Mobile Panel MP40 and MP50 families are described as ergonomic, light and extremely impact-resistant.

The new devices enable safe and simple on-site operation and monitoring with a broad range of functions.

The main differences within the various series include display size and the types of operating elements. Depending on the application, operating elements might include a joystick, handwheel, override potentiometer, key switch, or illuminated button. The MP40 and MP50 Mobile Panel devices are available with a 3.8inch QVGA LCD monochrome display or a 6.5inch VGA TFT colour display.

For safety, an emergency stop button is integrated via an additional connection box, which enables the unit to be connected and disconnected during operation without loss of the safety function. Two integrated three-step enable switches, ergonomically designed for left- or right-handed operators, provide a high degree of safety, even during set-up.

Source and more info: engineerlive

Analytical Technology (ATi) introduces the innovative Q45H/65 Residual Chlorine Dioxide Monitor for the online monitoring and control of industrial disinfection systems. This system is suitable for use in water plants as well as food processing and beverage plants. The Q45H/65 responds to chlorine dioxide with minimal interference from any residual chlorine which may be present.

Chlorine dioxide is a powerful disinfecting agent used of treating potable water, cooling water and food processing wash water. To ensure proper disinfection while minimizing disinfection by-products, the concentration of disinfectant must be precisely maintained. The Q45H/65 Chlorine Dioxide Monitor from ATi features a unique membrane covered polarographic sensor that does not require the addition of expensive chemical reagents. All that is needed is a consistent flow of water across the face of the sensor which can be provided by a simple constant-head flowcell. The sample water is unaffected by the measurement and can be safely discharged back into the process.

Source and more info: automation