RS Hydro
Like so many areas within the mining/aggregate sector, quarries have limited lifespans and therefore long-term investment in plant is not the best economic choice and as such every installation is chosen locally on its merits with cost being the predominant factor. However, with the recent developments in EPR and MCERTS legislation, companies now have to look long and hard at their monitoring solutions and evolve from a short term to a longer term approach.
RS Hydro (http://www.rshydro.co.uk) have recently secured a contract to supply, install and monitor 250+ flow monitoring installations across the UK for CEMEX, a leading supplier of cement, readymix and aggregates. RS Hydro (a leading total solutions provider and distributor in the UK process and environmental sectors) are providing a solution including all measurement equipment centred around the Siemens SITRANS range of electromagnetic / open channel flow meters and Adcon’s AddWAVE radio and GPRS telemetry logging system.
The contract is believed to be the largest of its type in the UK and comes from the recent developments in the Water Framework Directive (WFD), Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR) and MCERTS. The new legislation is driving the need to monitor activities regulated by Environmental Permits and this is creating challenges for businesses in a range of industrial sectors. The RS Hydro package provides a complete solution. “In its tendering process CEMEX demonstrated its forward thinking approach to solving new regulation challenges and embracing modern technology to produce cost effective solutions to increasingly complex compliance management and monitoring data capture.” states Rob Stevens.
Under EPR and MCERTS, monitoring instrumentation for discharges to rivers, streams and the sea requires that all equipment is of an acceptable standard. Instrumentation is broken down into three main categories:
• Automatic waste water samplers - Automatic collection of water samples for laboratory analysis
• Online analysers - For substances like ammonia, dissolved oxygen and nitrate
• Flow meters - For the continuous monitoring of effluent flow
The Environment Agency requires EPR regulated sites with an effluent monitoring requirement in their permit to comply with the MCERTS Self Monitoring of Effluent Flow scheme. Generally speaking this will include any operator discharging more than 50 cubic meters per day. A site conformity inspection certificate will be issued once a site inspection and management system audit has been conducted. An MCERTS inspector will undertake both of these exercises and pass the information to SIRA who will issue a Certificate of Conformity and will remain valid for five years.
The SITRANS range of Siemens flow meters are regarded as the best in the marketplace:
As little as 10-15 years ago, remotely connecting a flow meter to a central database hundreds of miles away to provide continuous data was quite a task. A plethora of battery powered GSM data loggers appeared in the market place but generally only providing data once per day. However, it would appear that is where the technological advancement has stopped. Efforts have been directed at conserving power and making RTUs smaller rather than developing new techniques. The holy grail for remote datalogging is to provide a system that can send data continuously, say every 15 minutes, without the need to replace batteries every few months or provide mains power. However, Adcon’s advanced UHF/GSM/GPRS telemetry datalogging system i(http://www.rshydro.co.uk/
• Data can be transmitted free of charge;
• Such a station needs much less power and requires much smaller and cheaper - solar panels or battery packs;
• Installing dedicated relay stations is usually not necessary.
• Furthermore each base station, which collects data from short and long range radio stations, can also communicate with GSM and GPRS stations.
The combined pressures of the WFD, EPR and MCERTS has meant that CEMEX has contracted RS Hydro to install a comprehensive network of monitoring stations across all of its sites. The installation project expected to last for a minimum of 2-3 years will involve the monitoring of over 300 abstraction, process and discharge monitoring locations and is believed to be the largest project of its type in the UK. Depending on the importance of each process, data will be uploaded as often as every 15 minutes or as little as once per day. However, the upload and logging interval can be changed at any point during the day.
Almost all of the locations will require little or no maintenance. The complete network of instrumenation will be monitored automatically by creating statistical thresholds for both monitored parameters such as flow, turbidity, rainfall etc. and various fault diagnostic parameters. By example, the Siemens MAG 8000 flow meter has eight fault diagnostic alarms covering electrodes, coils and battery power (amongst others) which are scanned continuously. Like many manufacturers, most fault alarms can only be reset locally and therefore will ensure that the equipment is inspected and repaired rather than being ignored. The fault alarm will remain on the telemetry data portal until it has been cleared.
RS Hydro are appointed UK distributors for Siemens, GE Sensing (Panametrics)
Visit http://www.rshydro.co.uk
