Tag Archives: ITO

Remote Monitoring System for Major Norwegian Bottled Water Supplier

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Oriel Systems have recently completed a project for a large still and sparkling mineral water bottling plant in the Hardanger area of Norway.

This glacial wilderness has never been settled or industrialised and is protected from development by two national parks.  Access is difficult as temperatures fall below -40 degrees C at night time and the area is covered in snow with regular snowfalls and avalanches during winter time.  It is here and under these conditions that the mineral water is extracted to ensure it’s purity.  Since it’s introduction into the UK in 2008 the company has won many awards and is now sold in all major supermarkets throught the country

The project has involved a number of Oriel Intelligent Telemetry Outstations being installed at the Pump Houses located at strategic locations on the glacier face.  These Pump Houses are responsible for pumping the glacier water directly to the bottling plant some 5Km distant.  The main objective was to provide information on the performance of each of the Pump Houses and to be able to control the Auma actuated valves located at each remote site without having to send an engineer to site to physically open or close them using the supplied hand winding mechanism.  A trip to one of the Pump Houses would take approximately two hours due to the area being snow covered for most of the year and access finally involves an hours walk by the engineer due to snow and rough terrain.

With the extraction and bottling process it is imperative that no air is allowed to enter the water pipeline along which the mineral water travels as this could cause bacteria to grow and the quality of water would then be affected.

Communications between the sites is by GPRS with external low profile aerials to guard against snow and avalanche damage.  Oriel’s GPRS Telemetry solution links up all the remote sites and provides bi-directional communications between the Control Centre and the remote sites for critical equipment and process monitoring and control.

For further information please contact us on 01249 705070 or www.orielsystems.com

For further information please contact us on 01249 705070 or www.orielsystems.com

Norwegian Pump House

Automation of Rotork Actuators

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Oriel Systems have just completed a project for a large dairy in Wiltshire providing Automation and Control of a pair of Rotork Actuators and Penstocks.

Automation was required to prevent run-off water contaminated with milk powder from the manufacturing process entering the local watercourses until it had been tested for water quality purposes.

In normal operation the run-off water is stored in a large holding pond some distance away on site which is subject to evaporation and refilling through normal precipitation.  The distance and the terrain proved unsuitable and too costly to run cables between the penstocks and the sensor so Oriel reccomended the use of a low power radio link between the two locations.  Oriel engineers installed an Ultrasonic Level sensor at the holding pond along with an Oriel Intelligent Telemetry Outstation or ITO that would accept the water level signals.   In cases of extreme precipitation and when the holding pond reaches it’s upper level and only once waterquality testing has been performed and found to be of acceptable quality can the signal be sent over the radio link to the Actuators and allow operation of the Penstocks to release water to a safe level into the local watercourse.

Driver Controlled Delivery System for BP LPG

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Oriel Systems have been awarded the contract for the supply and integration of CCTV and Remote Monitoring and Control Systems into BP’s Driver Controlled Delivery system at all the BP LPG sites throughout the UK.

 

The problem that BP had was that their 13 LPG filling terminals sites were all 24/7 operations and the Health and Safety Executive insisted on 2 people being present at all times to oversee the filling operations.  Some days there may not be a single tanker pulling in to refuel and yet there would still need to be 2 BP staff on site.  Over all of BP’s sites this amounted to 26 staff that would have to be employed and also paid overtime (with unsociable shift allowances) although in many cases these staff may not actually be required.

 

Oriel Systems’ PC based Control and Monitoring software system was installed at each site, which, upon a tanker arriving out of hours would open a voice communications channel between the filling site and the Central Control Station located in Scotland.  As soon as this communications link is opened up the screen for the individual site automatically appears in the foreground on the PC.  From the overview screen the Central Control operator grants the tanker driver the required permissions to commence re-fuelling operations and a “time band” is allocated to him.  During this “time band” all the critical and emergency systems such as the fire pump and deluge system are running non-stop.  Once the “time band” has been exceeded the system will automatically shut down necessitating another “time band” to be allocated and permissions to be repeated.

 

At all times, two cameras, one fixed the other moveable via on screen controls follow every move the tanker driver makes.  If he were to fall and injure himself this would be picked up immediately and the necessary action initiated and the operation automatically shut down.

 

Although CCTV is commonplace these days, the difference was that BP wanted a system that allowed their remotely sited operators to view their own sites on their standard office PC’s and also that the filling operations at each of the remote sites could be viewed over BP’s own high speed Wide Area Network from any location around the country just by plugging a laptop into the nearest standard telephone connection point and accessing the relevant password protected pages.  This gave BP the flexibility that they needed at this time, with the option to move the Control Centre to another location at a later date without incurring additional expense.