Application Stories: Instrumentation and Environmental Monitoring

Instrumentation of Metal Recycling

A British company is using a rotary kiln incinerator to recycle silver from waste material. Part of the process includes "cleaning" waste gases, and they have a legal requirement to maintain records to prove emissions don't exceed current limits. To achieve this they have chosen a Microlink 1500 system from Biodata Ltd, which provides the flexibility and control they need.

Using a personal computer and Windows engineering software, the Microlink system monitors many variables including temperatures, pressures and speed of kiln rotation. It also gathers data from other manufacturers' controllers and instruments, logging data from all sources to one file. The data is stored on floppy disks and can be accessed from the archive at any time. Real-time charting and process mimic displays complete the system, giving control options as well as historic data.

Distributed Measurements

The controlling PC has to be kept away from the incinerators and is located in an office 50 metres distant. The sensors, controllers and instruments are 20 to 30 meters apart. The Microlink 1500 is designed for distributed measurements such as these, and uses RS485 twisted pair communications.

Flexible Data Logging

The data logging software, called Windmill Logger, is extremely flexible. It can automatically create new files at given intervals, every day or every week for example. Several loggers can run simultaneously. This allows logging from different rigs to be started and stopped independently, or for several sets of channels to be logged at different rates. Each set of data is time and date stamped.

The Microlink system has proved so effective that Biodata is currently expanding it to monitor more rotary kiln incinerators.


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