Keeping accurate tabs on cooking oil consumption
October 2001
PLCs, DCSs & Controllers
Simba Foods recently contracted Ana-Digi Systems to construct and program an intelligent PLC system to route and log the flow of cooking oil in its Parow, production facility.
The oil for the four production lines is pumped into and stored in three main tanks and two reserve tanks. Tank levels are monitored by loadcell and ultrasonic measurement equipment, with production line routing being effected by 18 butterfly valves. Oil inflow is measured in litres via a flowmeter common to all tanks. A second flowmeter measures the consumption of oil to the soft extrusion (SE) line. By utilisation of inflow and outflow information and current tank quantities, accurate records can be kept of oil consumption on all lines. Pump and valve sequencing is selected on a LG PMU 200 HMI connected to a LG GM6 rack-mounted PLC, while tank level and mass values are retransmitted from the measurement equipment to two analog input modules on the same PLC.
The tank content inflow and consumption values appear on the HMI enabling accurate record keeping to be realised. Value sequencing grids were set up on easily understood screens. A flow selection then automatically excludes any illegal valve or pump combination. As the sequencing is correlated with the pipeline versus product information, accurate records of individual line consumption can be interpolated.
Tank level screen
It is the intention of Simba management to tie oil consumption records to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet at a later date. The facility is available via an OPC server or DDE link. After three months, the system has performed impeccably, so much so, that expansion of the system is being contemplated to accommodate additional storage tanks handling maize flour.
Usage screen
Abbreviations used on screens:
PC - Potato chips
NN - Nik-Naks
FR - Fritos
SE - Soft extrusion
Ra - Reserve storage tank A
Rb - Reserve storage tank B
Ana-Digi Systems
(021) 948 1452
[email protected]
www.anadigi.co.za
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