Wirelessly connected PLC’s in soil and groundwater remediation
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Mourik N.V., part of the international holding Mourik and specialised in civil engineering, industrial services and soil and groundwater remediation, presented Multicap a new challenge in the beginning of 2008.
Mr. Wouter Vanbrabant (Mourik N.V.) explains:
"To support a preventive maintenance and a quick intervention on site for the soil and groundwater remediation systems, Mourik had developed a telemetry and alert system. This system proved to be very valuable for many years but could use some optimization considering the newest fast development in communication technology. To do so Mourik set up a partnership in 2008 with Multicap to develop a new monitoring system based on GPRS technology with a built in SMS alarm system."
Mourik N.V., part of the international holding Mourik and specialised in civil engineering, industrial services and soil and groundwater remediation, presented Multicap a new challenge in the beginning of 2008.
Mr. Wouter Vanbrabant (Mourik N.V.) explains:
"To support a preventive maintenance and a quick intervention on site for the soil and groundwater remediation systems, Mourik had developed a telemetry and alert system. This system proved to be very valuable for many years but could use some optimization considering the newest fast development in communication technology. To do so Mourik set up a partnership in 2008 with Multicap to develop a new monitoring system based on GPRS technology with a built in SMS alarm system."
Mourik was looking for a new ‘reliable, cost efficient and flexible’ system to provide for valuable statistical and optimization data. Besides, they also required the integration and tracing of their event driven alarm system, supported by a remotely accessible central point of management. By means of alarms, they had been using SMS to alert technicians, but felt short on flexibility to modify GSM numbers when technicians are off duty, etc.
Together with the environmental engineers at Mourik, who intensively defined their requirements, Multicap developed an all in-house integrated software solution, which enables for both the remote monitoring and control via GPRS of all the installations, and alarming of technicians via SMS, all with one GPRS modem per installation and from a central point of management.
The integrated solution uses the rock solid Urmet Industrial PLUS GPRS modem for its cellular communications and integrates Derdack’s Message Master Enterprise Alert for SMS alerting.
Every 30 minutes, the central server connects to the PLC’s used in the remediation installations via the GPRS modem, talks directly to the PLC and queries all operational data from the installation. These data are all stored in a central database, made accessible to Mourik’s engineers via a custom tailored user interface. The user interface allows for visualization of historical data, and direct access to the PLC’s to set certain parameters to optimize the installation.
Mr. Wouter Vanbrabant continues:
"This new GPRS system allows Mourik to gather more data from the different PLCs of the soil and groundwater remediation plants and store it in a central database. It also supports an active remote control of the local PLC. The combination of the central database and the direct SMS notifications allows Mourik to efficiently organize long-term planning as well as immediate corrective measures. Thanks to this combination Mourik can guarantee a very high operation rate of the different installations."
As an outcome, the new solution proves to be specifically tailored to the Mourik’s needs, reliable, economic and more flexible in terms of data usage over the cellular network, while providing up-to-second valuable data to the environmental engineering team.
Mr. Wouter Vanbrabant concludes:
"The new monitoring and alert system is running in full production and it proofs to be reliable and cost efficient. Furthermore the setup structure makes it very easy to connect new installations on the system while making them immediately remotely accessible to technicians and engineers. With the new system Mourik also easily meets the current demand from customers for extensive remote monitoring and detailed maintenance reports."
Summarized, this project adds another success story for Multicap as a wireless solution provider.