FEATURE Sensors & Sensing Systemsy
Ifm Electronic IO-Link sensors keep Marston’s Brewery on the level By Tim Dodd, Product Sales Manager, Ifm Electronic
M
arston’s Brewery has a long and proud tradition producing popular and highly-regarded English
ales in Burton on Trent, Staff ordshire, since 1898. But although tradition has much to recommend it when it comes to the techniques of beer production, it is not always the case with process control. Modern options can sometimes off er important benefi ts, as proved to be the case when the company decided to update the level control system on six of its storage tanks, holding up to 21,000 litres of beer each.
Prior to the update, plant operators manually monitored and controlled beer levels in the tanks with sight glasses – essentially the same system since the brewery fi rst opened. Sight glasses require regular cleaning, which is diffi cult and inconvenient. Some are not always readily visible, making it hard for operators to keep track of the levels, occasionally resulting in a tank becoming completely empty, allowing air into the system and, hence, disrupting the operation of the bottling lines.
Key requirements
For help with devising a better and more dependable level-control solution, Marston’s Brewery approached sensing experts, Ifm Electronic. Key requirements included accurate and remote automatic control of levels in the tanks to interface with the plant’s existing PLC and SCADA systems, with clear level indication via digital displays adjacent to the tanks. Ifm Electronic engineers proposed
16 November 2020 | Automation
that each tank should be fi tted with two fl ush-fi tting hygienic PI2796 pressure sensors with integral displays and one LMT100 hygienic level sensor. The sensors incorporate IO-Link interfaces, meaning that digital process values are transmitted, which greatly simplifi ed interfacing them with the existing plant systems and, also, ensured that the data they captured would always be accurately transmitted. The plant systems use an Ethernet network with redundant ring topology for high reliability. The Ifm IO-Link sensors were connected to this via AL1121 Ethernet interface modules which, with their IP65 rating, are suitable for installation in the fi eld without additional protection. The requirement for local display of the tanks’ levels was met with E30391 IO-Link display modules that connect directly to an IO-Link master port on the AL1121 and, like the Ethernet interface modules, require no additional protection when mounted in the fi eld.
In most applications, the sensors would Installation layout
be installed on top of the tanks but, in this case, space above the tanks was limited and access diffi cult. The decision was therefore taken to mount the sensors in the pipes that supply the top pressure to the tanks. In this location, the sensors provide identical data, but installation was much faster, easier and safer since no scaff olding was needed.
Sensors replacement Despite the exceptionally-high reliability of modern sensors, the Marston team wanted to be sure that, should it ever prove necessary, the sensors could easily be replaced. This requirement was satisfi ed not only by installing the sensors at a convenient working height, but also by an intrinsic feature of the IO-Link system which allows confi guration data to be directly loaded into the sensors. If a sensor needs to be replaced, all that’s needed is to send confi guration data to the replacement via its normal IO-Link connection to make it ready for immediate use. The need for inconvenient and time-consuming manual setting up is completely eliminated, which helps ensure plant downtime is minimal. The project took just four days instead of
the projected six and, as an added bonus, the overall cost was also under budget. So successful was the upgrade at Burton
on Trent that Marston Brewery is now considering rolling out similar solutions to its other locations.
CONTACT:
Ifm Electronic
www.ifm.co.uk
automationmagazine.co.uk
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