8 Water / Wastewater
Evolution in Environmental Monitoring and Added Value of Wireless Data Transmission
Increasing needs for process control, as well as the global growing environmental concerns, require companies and site operators to monitor and report a very wide variety of environmental conditions. These measurements take place within and around the industrial sites to provide accurate information to local and state regulatory departments.
Regulatory agencies require landfi ll operators to measure and monitor the water levels within all ground wells in the landfi ll site, monitor leachate accumulation and removal, and accurately monitor methane gas production, removal, venting, and burning.
Process monitoring requires having a global overview of operational fi gures, machine status, and utilities use. On the environmental side, most measurements concern gaseous emissions or effl uent discharge. The environmental variables that must be recorded and reported vary depending upon each industrial site and activity. Provided by all types of on-site instrumentation, sensor data may include temperature, fl ow, pressure, and the composition of utilities, liquid, and exhaust discharged into the environment.
Bringing existing sites up to the new technological standards can be a time consuming and costly task because the power supply and signal wires to and from the sensors were not part of the original facility’s plan. Today’s industrial wireless technology is easy to install, power grid independent, and provides several confi gurations such as simple point to point, star, or tree network topologies where multiple sensors, instrumentation, and controllers can be connected over an entire plant.
Continuous improvement in wireless technology has made monitoring process and environmental conditions in many hazardous locations much easier and safer with the development of autonomous and EX approved devices. Personnel are no longer exposed to dangerous or unpleasant environments and the frequency of manually monitoring or recording environmental readings from diffi cult-to-access locations has decreased.
Banner Engineering has developed a series of industrial wireless
I/O solutions that range from self-contained, environmentally rated housings to embeddable board models designed to be installed into enclosures already in use at the site.
Environmental Monitoring Applications
Due to the confi guration of waste, water, and wastewater treatment sites where distance between equipment can be important, and local power supply is not always guaranteed, wireless technology is particularity adapted to monitoring process and environmental data. These confi gurations are also commonly found in the oil and gas industries.
Water treatment plants
Water undergoes several stages during its treatment process, from primary treatment to coagulation, fl occulation, and clarifi cation. Instrumentation and sensors are installed at several stages of the process. One sensitive point is measuring the sludge level in the clarifi cation tank. Because the sensor is installed on the clarifi cation tank bridge, communicating the sensor information back to the supervisor is done using slip rings that do not guarantee a reliable transmission and need frequent replacement. By using a wireless node, signals from multiple tanks can be transmitted up to several hundred meters to the main control room.
Wireless Interface Solutions for Instrumentation in Environmental Monitoring
Pressure Compost Temperature Radars Flowmeters Transducers
Hans Lawton,
Business Development Manager for Environmental at Banner EMEA
Susan Schnelbach,
Technical Writer at Banner Engineering Web:
www.bannerengineering.com Email:
mail@bannerengineering.com
IET March / April 2014
www.envirotech-online.com Ex Environment
www.bannerengineering.com/eu
149-IET-WirelessMonitoringInstrumentation.indd 1
Banner Engineering – Wireless Interface Solutions for Instrumentation in Environmental Monitoring 2014 Mar 04 16:48:20
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Dual Float Sensors
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