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Case Study: Minera San Cristobal, Bolivia – 2

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Using DataHub software to integrate video cameras and expert systems

Minera San Cristobal, owned by Apex Silver and Sumitomo Corporation, is one of the largest silver-zinc-lead mining projects in the world. The mine, located in the Potosi district of southwestern Bolivia is expected to produce approximately 450 million ounces of silver, 8 billion pounds of zinc, and 3 billion pounds of lead.

As described in a companion article, the engineers at the San Cristobal mill used DataHub® software to connect their DeltaV Professional Plus SCADA system to an SQL Server database in the corporate offices. After witnessing the success of that project, the engineers decided to connect their two SGS expert systems to DeltaV in a similar way.

“We saw how well DataHub software transported OPC data across the network,” said Sr. Mario Mendizabal, Production Engineer at Minera San Cristobal, “so we thought it could help us connect to our Grinding and Flotation Expert Systems.”

In the San Cristobal mill the ore extracted from the mine is crushed, ground, and refined through flotation process to yield concentrates of silver, zinc, and lead, which are then shipped abroad for final smelting. These processes are monitored and controlled using the DeltaV system.

Although the DeltaV system allows an operator to input setpoints and other values directly into the system, Sr. Mendizabal and his team wanted to apply an SGS Advanced Systems application to optimize two critical parts of the mineral refining process: grinding and flotation. Each expert system runs on a separate sever. To add to the challenge, the Flotation Expert System also requires real-time data input from two banks of 25 video cameras. These cameras monitor the size, speed, and other qualities of the bubbles as they lift the valuable mineral particles to the surface, where they can be skimmed off as foam. There is one bank of cameras for the zinc flotation circuit, and another for lead. Each of these five systems-DeltaV, the Grinding Expert System, the Flotation Expert System, and the two camera systems-needed to be connected in real time.

Fortunately, each system had an OPC server. What was needed was a way to bridge the OPC servers, aggregate their data streams, and tunnel/mirror the data across the network for the other systems. Based on his previous success using DataHub software, Sr. Mendizabal chose to apply it to this task. He already had a DataHub instance connected to the DeltaV system. So he just installed a DataHub instance on each of the SGS servers, and each of the camera system servers. Then he connected those four DataHub instances to the main DataHub instance running on the DeltaV server.

“It didn’t take long at all to get the system configured,” said Sr. Mendizabal. “Since it is tunnel/mirroring across the network, we avoided DCOM settings and networking issues entirely. The connection is completely secure, and rock-solid.”

When the expert systems are switched on, the plant data flows from DeltaV to the Grinding Expert System and the Flotation Expert System. These systems continuously and intelligently adjust the values of the setpoints, and send them back in real-time to DeltaV, which passes them along to the relevant process. To make its calculations, the Flotation Expert System also takes into account the real-time data that is streaming in from the two Video Camera Systems.

“It is very important to know that when the expert system is controlling the plant we are trusting our production to DataHub software,” said Sr. Mendizabal. “We are very pleased with its performance, and highly recommend it for this kind of mission-critical work.”

Case Study: TESS Engineering, Japan

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Remote Monitoring for Boiler Systems

A hot topic in Japan right now is energy production, use, and conservation, with a renewed concern for the environment. Industrial and commercial users are looking seriously at implementing alternative energy systems, and making the best use of their resources.

One company that has built a solid reputation in this arena is TESS Engineering, in Osaka. TESS provides installation and remote monitoring for solar generation systems, co-generation systems, boilers and other equipment. They are always looking for new ways to save energy, reduce costs, and preserve the environment.

TESS logo

A major challenge facing TESS has been monitoring and maintaining boiler systems for large, decentralized companies. Site visits are expensive, particularly at remote, out of the way locations. Each visit requires shutting down the boiler, taking readings of up to 500 data points, and then restarting. This approach can lead to inaccuracies, since in a rapidly-changing system environment the data may be out of date even by the time the engineer returns to the home office.

For some time TESS had considered remote monitoring via the Internet, but there were drawbacks. “Some of our client’s remote locations don’t have Internet access,” said Mr. Kinya Oji, General Manager at TESS, “and for those that do, creating a process visualization system would require a significant development effort over a long period of time. If we were going to make such an investment, we wanted a complete solution.”

Nissin Systems logo

Through Cogent’s partner in Japan, Nissin Systems Co. Ltd., TESS learned about the Cogent DataHub®, as well as a new service that Cogent has started offering on a limited basis in Japan: remote, real-time data access through cloud computing. Engineers at TESS determined that this approach might be sufficiently flexible to meet their needs, and easy enough to implement that they would not need to embark on a lengthy development project. So, TESS assigned an engineering team to investigate.

Working closely with Nissin Systems, the TESS engineering team began by creating serial I/F links between each boiler and a number of device servers (typically 10 or so), and then brought all that data to a gateway device. In locations where the gateway device had access to the company LAN, it was then connected to a DataHub on the LAN. In locations too remote to connect to the company LAN, the gateway device was connected to a 3G phone network. In both cases, the data was sent from the gateway device―via LAN or 3G―to a DataHub running on a cloud server.

“When everything got connected, we were able to aggregate all the information coming from each boiler, and access that data in real time from the DataHub running on the cloud server,” said Mr. Oji. “The next and most important part of this system was an HMI. We needed something simple and intuitive for operators to use, without investing a lot in development costs. Using WebView™ we were able to create a user-friendly monitoring system in reasonable time, and not too much effort.”

Case Study - Tess Engineering, Japan

The complete, functioning system not only provides web-based access to data from every boiler in the system, but TESS is realizing additional benefits from a fully integrated middleware solution. Live and archived data is currently being used for analyzing boiler performance, keeping regular records of operations, and for sending out alarms and emails to operators and managers.

“We can view our historical data trends graphically in WebView,” said Mr. Oji, “while at the same time using the DataHub’s Data Logging and Historian features to connect databases and store the data. During monitoring, if any abnormal conditions occur, we can generate alarms and send out emails. We also use the DDE feature to automatically generate spreadsheets for our daily, monthly, and annual reports.”

“By networking through the cloud, we have been able to establish an effective method by which the customer can monitor the changing states of all of their boilers, in real time. Now the company operators and managers can respond quickly to boiler conditions at individual sites.”

“Our customer was very satisfied by this solution. They can now operate their system efficiently and safely, and plan to install this system in more than 100 more boiler sites in the near future. Here at TESS, we are looking forward to using the DataHub and WebView to develop this kind of solution for other customers.”

Case Study: KuibyshevAzot Chemical Plant, Russia

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Russian chemicals giant KuibyshevAzot uses DataHub software to link Yokogawa DCS to proprietary system in QNX

Deep in the heart of Russia, on the banks of the Volga River, stands one of the country’s most successful chemical plants: KuibyshevAzot. Founded in 1966, the company produces over 1.5 million tons of chemicals per year, with sales volumes averaging around ½ billion dollars. Through constant technology upgrades, the plant maintains the highest efficiency levels in all of Russia for ammonia production—and higher than average efficiency levels for nitrogen fertilizer production.

One of the goals at KuibyshevAzot is to update and re-equip the plant to optimize the consumption of raw materials and energy. To meet this goal they recently installed a Yokogawa CENTUM CS3000 Distributed Control System to control their ammonia production process. They were satisfied with the performance of this state-of-the-art system, but there was one question – how to interface with their Plant Information System Server?

The Plant Information System Server is KuibyshevAzot’s proprietary system that collects live process data, calculates technical and economic performance indicators, and generates reports—processing more than 900 variables simultaneously in real time. Due to its mission-critical status, the system runs on the QNX real-time operating system. Getting the data from the Yokogawa control system into the Plant Information System was vital to the overall success of the project.

To create the data link, KuibyshevAzot chose the Windows and QNX versions of DataHub® software from Cogent Real-Time Systems.

Each of these DataHub instances is an off-the-shelf middleware program that collects and distributes real-time data. The DataHub instance that runs in Windows can connect to any OPC server, such as the Yokogawa ExaOPC Server used in the project. On the QNX side, the QNX version of DataHub software was connected to the Plant Information System server. Once connected to their respective systems, the two DataHub instances establish a TCP tunnel/mirroring connection across the network to create a Windows – QNX real-time data link.

“This connection has saved us a lot of money in development time,” said a company spokesperson. “The major requirement was to continue using our existing information system. The deployment of DataHub software saved us time and money because there was no need to purchase, develop, or configure a new information system. The update process was seamless. We kept our existing information display consoles and report forms. All we had to do was add more report forms and update the information displays.”

“KuibyshevAzot needed something robust, something they could trust with their vital data,” said Leonid Agafanov, Managing Director of SWD Software, Cogent’s local distributor who was involved in the project. “Linking the DataHub software in QNX to DataHub software in Windows combined the strengths of both systems.”

Case Study: Renewable Wind Power, Turkey

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Using the WebView application to monitor wind farm data

The country of Turkey is emerging as a growing economic and industrial power, with an estimated 6% annual increase in demand for electricity over the next 20 years, according to the Turkish Electricity Transmission Company. Investments in the energy sector will be well above 100 billion USD during that same period. Meriting special attention is wind power. Turkey has the highest growth rate of installed systems worldwide, leaping from 1,700 MW to 20,000 MW in just over a decade.

Riding this wave, a prominent electrical power production company in Istanbul invested heavily in renewable and alternative sources for power generation. They erected two new wind farms, with a third one and a thermal energy power plant on the way. As the construction phase neared completion, the company began looking at ways to monitor their wind farms and display the live data in their central Istanbul office, using a single web-based application.

“We needed a way to quickly view the energy production status in each of our two wind farms,” said the Director of Operations. “We also wanted to see a summary of the total count of turbines in operation, in maintenance, and in failure status, along with detailed data from each turbine.”

A challenge for the data integration was that each of the two remote wind farms is controlled by a SCADA system that cannot be connected directly to the Internet. NSC Teknoloji, Skkynet’s partner for the Turkish market, proposed a solution using the DataHub® WebView™ application.

At each remote location NSC Teknoloji installed DataHub® software and connected it to the company’s SCADA system. Then they connected both of those sites to a WebView instance running at their central office. Once the data connection was made, NSC staff created special web pages to display summary and detailed data of the system and the wind turbines.

“The system is performing very well, transmitting more than 30,000 data points over the Internet, with 1-second refresh time,” said Mr. Ibrahim Serhan Arslan, Director of NSC Teknoloji. “It is incredible that we can carry this huge amount of data over the tightly restricted bandwidth of our Internet connection.”

nsc-wind-system

The HMI screens and controls were created easily through the WebView browser interface, with no programming. From his office, the Director of Operations can now view online megawatt production, wind speeds, temperatures, and total turbine count and operational status for each wind farm, all on a single page.

“In the near future we will add the third wind farm data to the system,” said Mr. Arslan. “Before they were only able to access this data for each wind farm one by one using the SCADA vendor’s web connect tool, and they had no way to view data from the whole system in one screen. Now they have a summary screen for all power plants, and the details for each plant are just one click away.”

“This is very efficient way to review the status of our wind farms,” said the Director of Operations. “We want to thank NSC Teknoloji and Skkynet for making this system work for us.”

Case Study: ABB, Colombia

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Electrical substation upgrade: connecting ABB MicroSCADA suite to Oracle using DataHub

A key task for ABB in Colombia is upgrading electrical substations. The ABB development team is always looking for new tools for their substation automation systems to make operation easier, and to provide as much information as possible for the system operators.

One of the latest developments was the addition of a database to their Substation Automation System. The Substation Automation equipment used by ABB is designed according the 61850 standard. The idea of adding a database was to allow the operator to access valuable information stored over long periods of time (2-4 years).

“As with most SCADA systems, the trends graphics and the historical data are stored temporarily,” said one member of the development team. “Your typical substation equipment is designed to have no moving parts. It uses a small, solid state disk to store data, which is not big enough to store information for long periods of time.”

abb-colombia-system

The ABB substation automation system uses ABB’s MicroSCADA suite. One of the functions of that software is to provide a gateway between the IEC 61850 data protocol and OPC. Using the information available in OPC, the development team chose the DataHub® from Cogent (a subsidiary of Skkynet) to interface between MicroSCADA and Oracle, storing process information in a network disk.

“We found the DataHub to be a powerful, user-friendly software package that allows us to bridge between our OPC server and Oracle,” said a member of the development team. “The support of the Cogent team was great. The DataHub is a very good complement to the IEC 61850 technology. We can save data in the Oracle database, and also monitor live data in the DataHub data browser. The first prototype is now in a testing period, and is running well.”

Case Study: Citect (Schneider Electric), USA

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Citect optimizes OPC-based system using the DataHub

A major battery manufacturing plant in the United States was recently faced with an interesting data integration challenge. Management needed access to data coming from a large number of different processes. Over 220 OPC-enabled field devices across the plant had to be connected to a single Citect MES system. The many OPC servers used for these connections are unique in that their data set is very dynamic. From one minute to the next any of the 220 devices may be present or absent in the data set.

citect-logo “Our challenge was to provide data from our dynamically changing OPC servers to a Citect system that is designed to work with a fixed data set,” said the company project leader. They decided to bring in a team from Citect to come up with a solution.

Citect, of Schneider Electric, is well known in the industrial process control world for their line of automation and control software solutions, particularly their MES systems. Dan Reynolds, the team leader for Citect, had heard about the DataHub® through his support department, and thought it might work. They configured the DataHub for OPC tunneling, to communicate across the network without the hassles of DCOM. And, thanks to the DataHub’s unique approach to OPC tunnelling, Dan found that it also solved the problem of providing a fixed data set.

citect-battery-manufacturing-system

“The DataHub mirrors data across the tunnel,” said Dan, “so the Citect system sees a constant data set. When a device goes offline, the tag remains in the DataHub. Just the quality changes from ‘Good’ to ‘Not Connected’.” Confident in their approach, the Citect team moved the testing from their location to the battery plant. But they soon found themselves faced with another challenge.

The production system is designed so that a field device can add or remove OPC items at any time. So, not only the OPC servers, but individual tags can suddenly appear or disappear from the system. When a new tag comes online, the server updates its tag count, but doesn’t say that a new value is available, because the OPC specification doesn’t require a server to say when a new point is created. This looked like a show-stopper for the configuration team. They knew that there is no OPC product on the market that can deal with that kind of behavior. Continually rereading the data set was not possible, because new points may be added during the read. So Dan got in touch with Cogent (a subsidiary of Skkynet), and working together they came up with a plan.

The solution was two-fold. First, the device behavior was modified to compact the tag add/delete cycle to a limited time. Then Cogent wrote a DataHub script that monitors a few OPC server tags, and when these tags change, a time-delayed function in the script re-reads the server’s data set. The scripted time delay allows for all the new points to be added before the data set is reread, and the DataHub thus discovers all of the new data as soon as it all becomes available.

“We are pleased with the performance of the DataHub for this application,” said Dan Reynolds. “There is no way we could have done this project with any other OPC tunneling product, or combination of products.”

“The Skkynet software has become an integral part of our MES solution,” said the project leader. “Without the DataHub, we would not be getting reliable data. If we hadn’t had it, our MES integration project would probably have come to a halt.”