Northern Foods

Background

The DataEye RTU can be used for a great many applications but its primary use is for remote monitoring and alarming. A company within the food industry made the decision to install a DataEye RTU at its site.

The goal for the customer was to ensure that prior to drainage entry, the water quality of the effluent from their industrial food process was of a sufficient quality to satisfy the relevant water treatment legislation. United Utilities undertakes the checks at this large bakery and the water
is being regularly tested for BOD, COD, Total Suspended Solids and pH.

The company’s past performance in this area had been satisfactory but they believed that with further control improvements on their waste water treatment plant that they could improve performance further.

The benefit would then be to firstly save costs by introducing a more efficient treatment process, to then reduce their trade effluent charge
and thirdly to further satisfy United Utilities and the Environment Agency that they were meeting their regulatory consents.

Action Taken

Within the water treatment plant, two sensors measure the water pH level and are connected to the DataEye RTU’s analogue inputs. Four float switches are connected to the DataEye RTU’s digital inputs. Only one RTU is required on site as each is capable of taking multiple analogue and digital input sensors.

After remote programming, the DataEye RTU now monitors the outputs from the 6 different sensors, logs the data and then responds appropriately if preset alarms limits are exceeded. Alarms are set to trigger if the pH level of the treated water moves outside a target range of pH 6 – 10. On this occasion, the form of alarm decided upon, was for both an e-mail and an SMS text message to be sent to key personnel every 15 minutes until the problem was corrected.

If for some reason the signals were not functioning properly then the DataEye RTU makes a routine daily health check and also raises an alarm if all signals are not being received.

Benefit Achieved

“The Teleonix system provided a low cost, reliable solution to our monitoring needs. A high level of data is capable of being stored right from day one introduction and this is very valuable for our regulatory compliance needs. Our ability for more accurate on site stock control improved dramatically overnight and has saved us a lot of money through lower inventory levels”