AquaMaster meters protect wetlands from mine flows

Mining company RWE Power has ordered 25 ABB AquaMaster electromagnetic water meters to help preserve groundwater based marshes and wetlands around its German coal mines

Mining company RWE Power has ordered 25 ABB AquaMaster electromagnetic water meters to help preserve groundwater based marshes and wetlands around its German coal mines.

The meters monitor the amount of water being pumped back into the nature reserves from the RWE open cast lignite mines, where constant pumping is needed to control groundwater levels in thee big mines.

RWE was previously using mechanical flowmeters to measure the water pumped back to the marshes.

The need for more accurate measurement of water flows and automatic data monitoring made electronic flowmeters an attractive proposition.

However, with many of the meters located beyond the reach of mains electricity, it was difficult for RWE to find a suitable electronic alternative for the sites.

AquaMaster meters from ABB provide the solution.

Fitted with their own battery power supply, AquaMaster flowmeters can be installed in locations where no mains supply is available.

Whenever RWE maintenance engineers find that a mechanical meter has failed, they now replace it with an AquaMaster as standard.

With a measurement accuracy of +/-0.5% over a turndown range of 1000:1, the AquaMaster can also deliver accurate measurement even at extremely low flow rates, compared with their mechanical counterparts which can only offer an accuracy of +/-2%.

In addition, ABB has now become the RWE Power preferred supplier of meters monitoring the pumping stations in the mines.

In this case, accessing mains power is not an issue and RWE has opted for the ABB COPA XE compact electromagnetic flowmeters.

Erosive particles in the untreated mine water led to frequent maintenance as sand in the water attacked and eroded the previously used mechanical meters, so the company initially tested 11 COPA XE units in its mines for nine months.

The units proved so successful in testing that RWE has already ordered a further 35 instruments, ranging in size from DN50 to DN300.

The AquaMaster and COPA XE are just two examples of the wide choice of ABB electromagnetic flowmeters for conductive fluids such as water, pastes, acids, lyes, juices and emulsions including fluids with a conductivity as low as 0.5microS/cm.

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