SPECIALIST EQUIPMENT
GOLD STANDARD for ACTUATOR CONTROL
A
Section of the Geotube dewatering plant, with the Rotork IQ actuators installed on the inlet pipework on the right-hand side
Shelley Pike reveals how a wireless network is controlling the fl ow at a Nevada gold mine
gold mine in Nevada, USA has been able to take advantage of wireless digital control for intelligent electric valve actuators on the water fi ltration plant.
T e Newmont underground mine utilises
Geotube dewatering technology to separate sediment from both ground and extraction process water. T e fi lter systems, which are installed above ground, are fabricated from a woven material that is permeable to water while retaining solids and sludge. Excess water drains through small pores, resulting in eff ective dewatering of the contained material, which is then processed to extract the gold. T e large- scale fi ltration operation has been automated by the motorisation of 15 widely distributed inlet and isolating valves with Rotork IQ actuators and a Modicon PLC to supervise the operation of the plant.
Pakscan network. T e wireless network delivers a reliable and economical solution, eliminating the cost of installing any additional site wiring apart from the actuator power cables. T e Rotork Pakscan P3 wireless network
control system establishes a secure wireless mesh network that is used to control the actuators and to gather important operating data for asset management and preventative maintenance. T e system consists of three main hardware components: a Pakscan P3 master station fi tted with a wireless interface module, which is typically connected to the plant’s control system using Modbus protocol over a serial or Ethernet connection; a Pakscan P3 wireless coordinator module, which can be mounted up to 200m away from the P3 master station and which functions as the base station for the system’s robust mesh network; and a wireless actuator module installed on each actuator. T e wireless system operates on the license-
free, globally recognised 2.4GHz ISM frequency band and has a line-of-site operating range between each device of approximately 30m indoors and 100m outdoors. Up to 60 actuators can mesh with a wireless coordinator. In a Pakscan wireless mesh network, each actuator on the network can act as an independent router to help signals get to their intended destination. A correctly designed network will be confi gured to provide two or more paths between each actuator and the wireless coordinator. T erefore, if the normal traffi c route is blocked or if a hardware or communication failure occurs, it can be overcome as the network dynamically determines an alternate route for the data to travel. ●
A Pakscan P3 master station communicates with the Modicon PLC using Modbus TCP Ethernet protocol for the monitoring and control of the valve actuators over a wireless
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www.engineerlive.com For more information ✔ at
www.engineerlive.com/ime
Shelley Pike is with Rotork Controls.
www.rotork.com
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