Control software in the swim
A
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms UK product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Mar 30, 2004
Procon Automatisatie, based in Westerlo, is an automation company specialising in process control systems for HVAC installations and water treatment plants.
Procon Automatisatie, based in Westerlo, is an automation company specialising in process control systems for HVAC installations and water treatment plants.
Based on this experience the company has become involved in retrofitting control systems at a number of swimming pools.
On the latest installation, GE Fanuc Cimplicity Machine Edition software has been installed alongside Series 90-30 controllers, with QuickPanels used as the local operator interfaces.
The regulations concerning safety and health in swimming pools have become very stringent, creating the need for very complex control systems.
The operational safety is very important.
The management and the control of a swimming pool can be considered like an industrial process.
As a consequence, costs, environmental impact and user satisfaction have become very important factors when it comes to design.
So far, Procon has retrofitted ten swimming pools.
Some of these installations have been carried out for the Dutch swimming pool builder, Lotec, which is based in Eindhoven.
Procon and Lotec are now building a brand new swimming pool in Overpelt.
This is based on the design of the engineer office, Artabel, from Leuven in Belgium.
This installation includes a Series 90-30 controller and several VersaMax I/Os, a 6in and a 12in QuickPanel, and a PC running Cimplicity Machine Edition with View machine level HMI to visualise the process and control devices.
The total number of I/Os in a large swimming pool complex can be around 1500, with about half of these being analogue.
For the control and management, most of the swimming pools are equipped with GE Fanuc Series 90-30 or VersaMax I/O controllers attached via Ethernet to a PC server.
Systems typically use Genius I/O, a very flexible and reliable GE Fanuc system with advanced diagnostics, which was developed specifically to reduce the costs of installation, startup, maintenance and downtime.
QuickPanels are used as local HMIs to operate pumps for filters, and to adjust temperatures and times.
They also provide alarms if parameters move outside their tolerance limits - for example temperatures, flow rates, water pH values and chlorination levels.
QuickPanels are also used to operate attractions like surges, whirls, waterspouts, wild-water tracks, children's pools, lagoons and whirlpools.
Bigger swimming pools also require a supervisory PC which offers not only archiving of captured data, but also historical trending and detailed alarm recording and reporting.
Detailed analyses and reporting of consumption of water, electricity and other fuels are of particular importance.
On the latest retrofits Cimplicity Machine Edition View is used, some with the facility to provide reporting and interrogation at a distance via telephone lines.
This GE Fanuc automation software provides all the components needed for HMI development, controller programming, PC-based control and application management, all embedded in the same programming environment.
Developers only need to learn one programming software, thus reducing training and development time.
A powerful combination of context-sensitive help functions aid this development.
With web-based reporting tools, real time information can be quickly accessed via a standard web browser.
Walter Dooms, Managing Director of Procon Automatisatie, explained why the company chooses products from GE Fanuc Automation.
"The reliability of the Cimplicity software and the controllers, HMIs and I/O hardware is the key", he said.
"Then there is the ease of development, with user-friendly procedures, used to create a new process control system.
And finally, we always get excellent help from our local distributor, Technolec based in Temse.
We don't hesitate to introduce new products from GE Fanuc to our customers.
We have done this with VersaMax, QuickPanel and now with Cimplicity Machine Edition, all with great results.
We never change a winning team".
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