Focusing On The Flow

CEMEX adopt nationwide monitoring solution to meet new EPR/MCERTS regulations

Like many elements within the mining/aggregates sector, quarries have limited lifespans and therefore long-term investment in plant may not always be seen as the best economic choice. As such, installations are often chosen locally based on their individual merits with cost being the predominant factor. However, with recent developments in EPR and MCERTS legislation, companies now have to look long and hard at their monitoring solutions and evolve from a short-term to a longer-term approach.

RS Hydro have recently secured a contract to supply, install and monitor more than 250 flow monitoring installations across the UK for CEMEX. In their tendering process CEMEX demonstrated a forward-thinking approach to solving new regulatory challenges and embracing modern technology to deliver cost-effective solutions to increasingly complex compliance management and monitoring data capture. As a leading total solutions provider and distributor in the UK process and environmental sectors, RS Hydro are providing CEMEX with a complete solution that includes all measurement equipment and which is centred around the Siemens SITRANS range of electromagnetic/open-channel flow meters and Adcon’s addWAVE radio and GPRS telemetry logging system.

The contract is believed to be the largest of its type in the UK and stems from recent developments in the Water Framework Directive (WFD), Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR) and MCERTS. The new legislation is driving the need to monitor activities regulated by environmental permits and this, in turn, is creating challenges for businesses in a range of industrial sectors.

Streamlined permitting

The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2007 replaced 41 separate sets of regulation and provided a common permitting framework for waste and PPC regimes. In England and Wales, EPR replaced:

• Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) permits
• Waste-management licenses (WML)
• Water discharge consents
• Groundwater permits
• Radioactive substances registrations or authorizations.

The Environment Agency’s aim is to move towards a single-permit, single-site, single-regulator regime in order to cut costs and red tape. Prior to EPR, different activities required different types of permission to operate, all with different names, forms, procedures and processes. However, all of the permissions served to achieve the same thing: to protect the environment.

The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 (EPP2 or Environmental Permitting Phase 2) came into force on 6 April 2010. These extended the EPP (2007) system of environmental permits to cover water discharge consents, groundwater authorizations and radioactive substances regulation. EPP2 now covers over 1 million permits and exemptions.

Any organization that holds a water discharge consent, groundwater authorization or radioactive substances authorization does not have to re-apply. The consent or authorization automatically becomes an environmental permit under the new regulations. The permitting framework created under EPP1, ie application process, exemptions, penalties and the Environment Agency’s enforcement powers, will remain unchanged.

If an organization previously held a PPC permit or WML, it automatically became an environmental permit as of 6 April 2008. If it held a water discharge consent, groundwater permit or radioactive substances registration or authorization prior to 6 April 2010, it automatically became an environmental permit as of 6 April 2010.

Types of permit

There are two types of permit available: standard and bespoke. A standard permit is a straightforward fixed set of rules which the permit holder is required to abide by. As these are standard rules, the application for a standard permit is quicker, clearer and more concise. Typical permits include waste-transfer stations and materials recycling facilities discharging 5–20m3 per day of treated domestic sewage to surface water. If the would-be permit-holder cannot comply with the standard rules, he/she would need to apply for a bespoke permit.

Monitoring permits

Under EPR and MCERTS, monitoring instrumentation for discharges to rivers, streams and the sea requires that all equipment is of an acceptable standard. Instrumentation is broken down into three main categories:

• Automatic waste-water samplers – automatic collection of water samples for laboratory analysis.
• Online analysers – for substances such as ammonia, dissolved oxygen and nitrate.
• Flow meters – for the continuous monitoring of effluent flow.

The Environment Agency requires EPR-regulated sites with an effluent-monitoring requirement in their permit to comply with the MCERTS Self-Monitoring of Effluent Flow scheme. Generally, this includes any operator discharging more than 50m3 per day. A site conformity inspection certificate will be issued once a site inspection and management system audit has been conducted. An MCERTS inspector will undertake both of these exercises and pass the information to SIRA who will issue a Certificate of Conformity that will remain valid for five years.

THE SOLUTION

RS Hydro were chosen by CEMEX because of their demonstrable track record of providing total solutions for environmental monitoring and data management covering installation, calibration and maintenance. Significantly, RS Hydro are also responsible for monitoring the entire network for any alarms and for uploading all data to CEMEX’s environmental database.

Flow monitoring

The overall project involves updating and installing a new and remote flow-monitoring system across the whole company for abstraction, process and discharge applications. These applications range from clean water and process applications through to flows with a high suspended solids content. Most of the applications fall within EPR and MCERTS and, as such, all flow metering instrumentation is required to meet MCERTS product standards. The only company to provide a full range of MCERTS-certified flow meters for pipe and open-channel flow applications is Siemens.

The SITRANS range of Siemens flow meters are widely regarded as the best in the marketplace, offering high performance, cost-effectiveness and reliability. Siemens Magflo meters are rugged in design and unaffected by electrode noise, disturbances or vibration. The SITRANS FM flow meters can be easily installed virtually anywhere as they can be powered by AC/DC power supplies or internal lithium batteries. At the centre of this project is the MAG 8000 – a microprocessor-based water meter with graphical display and key for optimum customer operation and information on site; it is available in sizes from 25–600mm and offers an achievable accuracy of ±0.2% of rate. The integral/remote transmitter drives the magnetic field in the sensor, evaluates the flow signal from the sensor and calculates the volume passing through. It delivers the required information, via the integrated pulse output or communication interfaces, as part of a system solution. Both versions are configured to achieve six years of battery-powered operation in typical applications.

Comprehensive information is accessible via the display and all information is accessible via the IrDA and communication interface with the PC Flow Tool or PDM software. Data and parameters are registered in a EEPROM and can all be read, but changing the information demands a software password or a hardware key attached to the printed circuit board. Flow and alarm status information from the flow meters will be monitored using all the available digital outputs, together with addWAVE telemetry loggers to transfer the data to RS Hydro’s Flowview data portal.

From wired to wireless

As little as 10–15 years ago, remotely connecting a flow meter to a central database hundreds of miles away to provide continuous data was a considerable task. A plethora of battery-powered GSM data-loggers did appear in the marketplace but these generally only provided data once a day. It would appear, however, that is where the technological advancement stopped. Efforts have been directed at conserving power and making RTUs smaller rather than developing new techniques. The holy grail for remote data-logging is to provide a system that can send data continuously, eg every 15min, without the need to replace batteries every few months or to provide mains power. Adcon’s advanced UHF/GSM/GPRS telemetry data-logging system, with its ability to provide continuous data as frequently as every minute but without the need to replace batteries, is considered to be unparalleled worldwide. Adcon achieve this by utilizing a mixture of super-efficient 2W and 4W micro-solar panels (smaller than an A5 sheet of paper), lithium batteries or mains-powered transformers. The RTU’s internal battery pack not only supplies the logger and the radio/GSM modem with power, but even the sensors attached to the system. In most cases this makes external power sources, cabling and cabinets obsolete, thus saving money in purchasing and operation. The Adcon system also uses a unique topology: every long-range radio station, whether it is a flow meter, a level sensor, a water quality platform or a weather station, can, at the same time, perform as a relay station for other long- or short-range radio stations. This not only extends the range of data transmission, but also reduces infrastructure costs for the following reasons:

• data can be transmitted free of charge
• a station such as this needs much less power and requires much smaller and cheaper solar panels or battery packs
• installation of dedicated relay stations is usually not necessary
• each base station that collects data from short- and long-range radio stations can also communicate with GSM and GPRS stations.

Using radio

addWAVE telemetry data-loggers can monitor up to 60 channels (SDI-12, digital and analogue) of data from flow meters, pumps and motors, level sensors, multi-parameter water-quality and weather station systems etc. They also have built-in relays to control associated equipment. Adcon RTUs operate either in the 430–470MHz frequency band, transmitting data up to 20km (12 miles), or they use the GSM/GPRS network. A common characteristic of all Adcon RTUs is their extremely low power consumption, well above average transmission distances, almost maintenance-free operation and their capability to be networked.

Using GPRS/GSM

The GPRS range of RTUs has all the same advantages as radio RTUs in terms of data-logging, remote monitoring, local control and power consumption. The decision to choose a radio network will depend on whether the user can monitor all the nodes using radio and can relay the data back to the central gateway. However, it is possible to have a remote site with 20 to 40 monitoring locations which send data locally, using radio, to a central base station (RA440) and which is then re-transmitted in GPRS/GSM format. Alternatively, all the locations could utilize more expensive GPRS data-loggers with 20–40 separate (and more costly) transmissions.

A diagram showing a typical Flowview remote monitoring network, utilizing UHF and GPRS RTUs, a UHF/GPRS bridge and a telemetry gateway is shown above.

Telemetry gateway

The A850 telemetry system gateway is at the centre of every monitoring network, whether it is a pure GSM/GPRS network, a UHF radio network or a combination of both. It is the A850 that knows exactly when and how to retrieve data from each RTU. This offers the following advantages:

• year-round solar-powered operation
• freely adjustable sampling and transmission intervals
• integrated data-logger and back-up battery
• easy to install, operate and maintain
• integral relay outputs
• all RTUs can be networked
• data retrieval via ethernet, modbus, RS-232 or a built-in analogue modem.

Data visualization

addVANTAGE Professional is Adcon’s universal data-visualization, processing and distribution platform. It is fully web based, runs on a fast and reliable Oracle 10g database engine, and is fully scalable from a single-user version for five RTUs to a superserver serving thousands of clients and thousands of RTUs. Essentially, it is a browser-based, fully Internet-enabled system that provides:

• Data visualization
• Data processing
• Data-distribution platform
• Customizable trends, tables, statistics
• Alarms and events
• Control of locally attached hardware/instrumentation

Data solution for any environmental or industrial application

The inherent flexibility of the software makes it a suitable tool for many applications for environmental, process and weather data, as well as for hydrographics, leakage detection, water-quality monitoring, pump monitoring and many other uses.

A user, whose RTUs are part of a network, no longer needs to install any software on their PC; high-speed Internet access and a standard web browser are sufficient.

For service providers, distributing data to many remote users is easy. The addVANTAGE Pro administrator can set up as many single users, user groups and guest accounts as needed, with individual access rights. The modular structure of the server allows for virtually unlimited scalability, while an embedded Oracle 10g database provides fast and efficient data access.

Options to individualize the trend panels are virtually unlimited with data from multiple sites viewable in a single panel, and trend panels can be set to display any desired interval including hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or even annual graphs. Hardware diagnostics and battery levels can be monitored and alarm levels set, and the convenient WAP interface can be configured to allow permanent mobile access. Data can be exported into third party software using ASCII files.

THE PLAN

CEMEX, through this project, have taken a very proactive approach to environmental monitoring. The combined pressures of WFD, EPR and MCERTS have led the company to contract RS Hydro to install a comprehensive network of monitoring stations across all of its sites. The installation project, which is expected to last for a minimum of two to three years, will involve the monitoring of over 300 abstraction, process and discharge monitoring locations and is believed to be the largest project of its type in the UK. Depending on the importance of each process, data will be uploaded as often as every 15min or as little as once a day. However, the upload and logging interval can be changed at any point during the day.

Almost all of the locations involved will require little or no maintenance. The complete network of instrumentation will be monitored automatically by creating statistical thresholds for both monitored parameters, such as flow, turbidity, rainfall etc, and various fault diagnostic parameters. By way of example, the Siemens MAG 8000 flow meter has eight fault diagnostic alarms covering electrodes, coils and battery power (among others) which are scanned continuously. Most fault alarms can only be reset locally and, therefore, will ensure that the equipment is inspected and repaired rather than being ignored. The fault alarm will remain on the telemetry data portal until it has been cleared.

CONCLUSIONS

Living in a densely populated country such as the UK has always required the need for stringent environmental monitoring, but legislation such as the WFD, MCERTS and the new EPR has meant much more substantial environmental monitoring is required by all organizations abstracting and discharging within the environment. As with this project, localized monitoring and reporting of flows, water levels and water quality is no longer a reliable way forward and now requires a more central approach. This project is a demonstrable step forward in a changing belief that large-scale automated reporting is required, primarily because of the new legal requirements placed upon companies to manage and effectively monitor all of their processes.

For further information, contact RS Hydro on tel: (01527) 882060; email: info@rshydro.co.uk; or visit: www.rshydro.co.uk