Smart Wireless monitors river-heat for Lenzing

Lenzing Fibers, a manufacturer of Tencel fibres, is using an Emerson Process Management Smart Wireless system to monitor river-water temperatures at a mill in Heiligenkreuz, Austria.

Installation of the wireless temperature transmitters in an Emerson self-organising wireless network enables Lenzing to meet local government regulations related to the temperature of water discharged into rivers and watercourses.

The Heiligenkreuz fibres plant uses water drawn from a local river for cooling purposes.

Local environmental regulations mean the water returned to the river must not be more than 3C higher than the water extracted.

The regulations also stipulate that the company must maintain a constant check and record of the water temperature at both inlet and outlet points.

Wolfgang Gotzi, head of the automation and maintenance department at Lenzing Fibers, said: 'Because of the distance of the River Lafnitz from the control room and the fact that people are free to walk by the river, we would have had to dig a trench for the cabling and this would have been very expensive.

'The cost of installing wireless is much lower and has made this project possible' added Gotzi.

Prior to the regulation being introduced, Lenzing had been monitoring the water temperatures manually, which involved daily visits to the river.

But to meet the environmental regulation, the results had to be made more reliable and these measurements had to be easily stored and made readily available for inspection.

Implementing a system that enabled online measurements gave Lenzing Fibers the opportunity to reduce the number of trips to the river.

The temperature of the water extracted from the river is transmitted wirelessly via an Emerson Rosemount wireless temperature transmitter to a Smart Wireless Gateway.

The gateway is positioned on an external wall of the pump-station control room, 200m away.

A second wireless transmitter is installed where water is returned to the river and a third transmitter is located 200m downstream, where it measures the temperature of the remixed water after the return point.

A fourth transmitter is used as a weather station and is situated by a lake used as a cooling-water reserve.

This device acts as a repeater and provides additional paths for the self-organising network, ensuring the highest possible communication reliability.

Emerson AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager manages the new Smart Wireless devices, enabling the technicians to configure the devices, run diagnostic checks and monitor alarms and alerts.

AMS Suite is also used to manage and store calibration information.

The Smart Wireless network is integrated into the existing Lenzing Fibers control system and the temperature information is stored in a data historian to meet the requirements of the environmental regulations.

Emerson self-organising technology delivers the highest communications reliability and makes it easy to add more measurement devices.

Each wireless device can act as a router for other nearby devices, passing messages along until they reach their destination.

If there is an obstruction, transmissions are simply re-routed along the network until a clear path to the Smart Wireless Gateway is found.

As conditions change, the wireless network simply re-organises and finds a way to get its signals through.

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