Press Releases

MOELLER AUTOMATES PURE WATER FEED

Programmable automation devices from Moeller are successfully controlling the supply of very pure water in varying quantities to manufacturing processes at a chemicals plant in Europe.

Acmos Chemie of Bremen, Germany, produces barrier layer products that prevent or minimise contact between two materials. The company uses hardening and reverse osmosis techniques to purify the water required for its manufacturing processes, then feeds this water into a storage tank and distributes it via ring main to five different filling stations at various production areas.

Accurate and precise mixing ratios at these production points are vital in order to maintain the high quality of the chemical products.

The whole process at Acmos Chemie was recently automated, before which a combination of manual and mechanical operations at the filling stations restricted operating personnel during the filling process and made it difficult to maintain precise dosing.

There was also a possibility that the simultaneous drawing of water from several stations could cause an uncontrollable supply shortage which would act as a limiting factor on plant capacity.

The automation task was undertaken by Elga Berkefeld, a company specialising in the design and construction of customer specific water treatment plants.

Elga Berkefeld has for several years used Moeller's easyRelay programmable compact controllers in conjunction with the MFD4 multi-function display, finding the combination indispensable as the key to solving general customer requirements.

The open communication interfaces and competitive price/performance ratio of the MFD4, in particular, are useful tools frequently employed by the specialist company.

At Acmos Chemie, the solution focused on the filling process, where actual sensor states such as flow speed and storage tank level needed to be measured in order to control actuators for the pumps and valves, so that the setpoint values defined by the operator could be reached.

An additional challenge arose from the fact that different setpoints were required for virtually every filling operation because of the different chemical products involved.

Operating personnel further requested that they be able to set product parameters at all filling stations with just a few operations at any time, and monitor at a glance the warning and fault messages, actual values, limit values and setpoints.

Moeller's metallic MFD4 multi-function display was chosen for the visualisation of the filling stations because of its programmable, full graphics colour display and robust touch technology.

Protected to IP65, the MFD4 is equipped with a flat, full graphics 5.7 inch TFT display, and incorporates 64MB of SRAM, 4MB of flash for data/programme memory and 6MB of flash for visualisation.

Users can make use of the integrated PLC functionality or use the standard CANopen/easyNet, Ethernet and RS232 interfaces for data exchange with different controllers. There is a slot for an onboard MMC card, and only the easySoft CoDeSys software is required for visualisation and the PLC application.

Utilising the MFD4 display and easyRelay compact controller, the programmer gains access to all the functions needed to create and access screens via the internet, manage passwords and alarms or trends, and chart displays using bargraphs.

The Acmos Chemie installation in addition allowed for intuitive operation by providing bargraph displays for filling levels and filling progress, as well as meters for flow speed, colour-based status changes, function settings and warning messages.

Elga Berkefeld's implementation at the plant used an easy800 connected to the MFD4 via the CANopen/easyNet interface to allow the connection of digital and analogue inputs and outputs.

Signals are processed in advance, so that pulses received from the flow meter are read as water volume and flow speed. The level in the supply tank is scaled to a litre value.

The MFD4 therefore receives absolute actual values from the easyRelay, allowing the released CPU resources to be used for other tasks.

ENDS

PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Remote filling station at Acmos Chemie

Issued on behalf of CBI-electric Industrial Controls (Moeller Division)
Further information: José Ruivo (manager sales & marketing)
Telephone: +27 11 977-0700
Fax: +27 11 977-0758
e-mail: ruivo@moeller.co.za
P O Box 100, KEMPTON PARK, 1620, SOUTH AFRICA

Issued by Thrush Industrial Marketing
Contact: Alan Thrush
Telephone: +27 11 483-1511
Fax: +27 11 483-3160
e-mail: info@thrushindustrial.co.za
P O Box 1933, HIGHLANDS NORTH, 2037, SOUTH AFRICA

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